Admin Roles and Sub Accounts (FLAT)

[joshua_johnson1]

Greetings, 

Due to some SIS limitations, our current school has a relatively flat SubAccount structure:

• School
  • EDU
  • BML
  • ADC
  • ETC....

I'm adding a permission such as (EDU/BML admin) but due to our limitation I can't give them their own parent folder.

If I add that permission to both accounts, then the user has to go and run reports on each account separately.

I was hoping to find a way to let them see them grouped together (i.e. if I gave them access at the Schools level, but it would only list courses in the subaccount they have access to below it).

My first attempt was to create a Schools permission that had no rights.  (This caused the Schools level to appear in their admin screen)... and then give them permission to view course list at the EDU and the BML subaccounts.  The problem is that when they would access the SChools subaccount course list, it showed all courses in Schools (even those for subaccounts they don't have access to and I didn't give the account any permissions at the school level).

Does anyone have any advice?  I wish I could add another level in the hierarchy, but that option isn't available.  Basically, I want someone to be able to click on the Schools and see only the list of courses in the subaccounts that they actually have access to.

Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @joshua_johnson1 ...

It doesn't sound correct that you would be only limited to one level deep when creating sub-accounts.  Are you being limited in some way to not create sub-sub-accounts in your Canvas environment?  If you are able to create these additional sub-accounts, what about trying a structure like this?

• School (your main account)
  • "EDU/BML" sub-account (or whatever you wanted to name it if you had a more common name for both)
    • EDU
    • BML
  • other sub-account
    • ABC
    • DEF
  • other sub-account
    • GHI
    • JKL

Then, I think you would enroll the admin at that sub-account level (which I've bolded above) instead of the "School" account.  This setup would keep a person from seeing other sub-accounts that they don't need/want to see in their own Canvas account.  And, if you wanted to have someone as an admin just for the "EDU" sub-account and another person as an admin for the "BML" sub-account, you could do that as well, and neither of those people would see the other sub-accounts.

Hope this might be a solution for you, Joshua.  Keep us posted on your progress!

[joshua_johnson1]

Yeah, to be clear... Canvas isn't the problem on adding more "parent" categories.  We are limited by the student information system which creates all these accounts within the integration because they have a relatively flat organization there (which I also can't change).  I can definitely make more, but it wouldn't sync with our integration setup so I'm looking for other options to do this with the permissions.

I was hoping that the Schools account (without permissions to see courses) would actually recognize that they have permission in some of the subaccount and pass them "up" the hierarchy.

[blopes · Accepted solution]

Hi @joshua_johnson1 

I understand. Unfortunately, what you are trying to set up with the permissions is not a behavior we would expect. If they have admin rights to two subaccounts, they still need to go into each of them for access to the information on them both. there isn't a way to get their information together unless they have access to the whole account. 

You are welcome to create a feature request. We are always happy to hear new ways we can improve.

How do I create a new idea conversation in the Instructure Community?