Sub Account Permissions.

[FrankMcHale]

I would like to set up a Sub Admin account for an external administrator who wants to access all the areas of a cohort we are hosting within our organisations Canvas platform. They want to manage their own analytics and course admin for a section of courses I've set up as a sub-account.

I'm trying to set up a sub-admin that only allows access to those courses within that cohorts sub-account section. I can't seem to set it up without it being able to access the rest of the platform. Can this be done?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @FrankMcHale,

This should definitely be doable as long as all of the courses are within a specific subaccount in Canvas (and not mixed with other courses in that same subaccount).   You can visit that subaccount in Canvas, and first add that person as a user there (if they do not already have an account in your Canvas instance).  Then go to the settings area for that subaccount, go to the admin tab, and add that user as some kind of admin role (the How do I add an admin to an account? - Instructure Community - 212  guide covers this).  That should be all you need to do!

Hope this helps. If this doesn't work for you or I've misunderstood your question, please do respond back here.

-Chris

[LanceLevin55]

No This doesnt answer the question. The admin user is still not able to add people as an admin on the sub account.

[chriscas]

Hi @LanceLevin55,

The admin trying to add more admins would need to have the "Admins - add/remove" permission enabled for at least the subaccount where they are trying to add the new admin.  This may be something your primary root Canvas admin would need to adjust for security reasons.  At my institution, there are only two people who can add additional admins (myself and my emergency backup).

Hope this info helps.

-Chris

[Lance_Levin]

HI Chris,

I have the following problem. I have a client on a subaccount on our main account. However i cannot make them admin of the subaccount, since they will have limited functionality. I.e. not able to enrol, add people, bulk downloads etc. However if i make them super administrators of my whole account, they have full access to my system. So i tried creating a new admin role, call it admin 2, with limited functions, however when i try to aDD THEM TO THE NEW permissions role i created, it doesnt appear. There seems to be no way to give them full admin rights on their subaccount only. PLEASE HELP

[chriscas]

Hi @Lance_Levin,

If you want to give someone full control (as much as possible within a subaccount, realizing some things like sis_import apply to a root account only), you don't even need a custom role.  You'd just add them as an admin in the subaccount with the Account Admin role.  With custom admin roles, I know there is some kind of back-end caching that sometimes causes the role to not display immediately in the rest of the UI, but that would normally resolve itself within a couple hours.

-Chris

[Lance_Levin]

Hi Chris, I did try and masquerade as the admin in the a subaccount, and it didn't allow adding users. Could this be because of my late payment for the annual licenses?

[chriscas]

Hi @Lance_Levin,

Sorry about this, it's a case that I forgot about as we addressed it in our instance a while ago.  Because users all actually exist at the root account level, the user needs to have a role with the "Users - manage login details" permission enabled at the root account level.  We created a role called "global privileges" and gave it this permission, then added our subaccount admins as admins in the root account with this limited role as well.  It does make all courses available to them in a very limited view, but will then let them add users on their subaccount page (or the root account one, since it's really all the same in the end).

Again, apologies that I forgot about this particular limitation originally.

-Chris