Access to Populi is based on the permissions granted by a person's user roles. Populi's roles reflect the typical range of responsibilities in a higher education context—Students take courses, Staff keep records, Registrars manage enrollment, etc. All users get basic access to Populi, which includes Home, Email, Calendar, Files, and My Profile. Beyond that, a user needs to be given a role in order to use Populi for anything more.

Giving someone a role...

1. It gives the user access to the appropriate functions and information in the system. For example, making a person a Student lets the student do things like enroll in courses, upload assignments, and so on. Making a person a Registrar enables them to create courses, run reports, modify enrollment status, and so on.
2. Populi starts tracking certain information about that person. Let's say the registrar is enrolling students on a course roster. When she searches for a name, Populi finds only people with the Student role—and not, for example, the Student Billing role. What's more, Populi now adds that course information to the students' transcripts. Likewise, the Faculty member assigned to the course can now grade assignments, take attendance, finalize the course, and be evaluated (among many other things).
3. It restricts those users from accessing anything that they aren't supposed to see. User roles also block people from certain activities and information. Academic Admin users, therefore, won’t be enrolled in courses, nor can students access Academic settings. This provides another security layer to protect sensitive information; quite simply, anyone who shouldn’t see certain information, won’t.

Some other things...

• Roles are not Tags. Tags simply tell you something about a person and help you group them together with other people—they confer no special access to those who've been tagged. Roles, on the other hand, determine what a user can do and what can be recorded about a person.
• User access is controlled independently of user roles. Read about granting user access, and see below for how to manage user roles.
• Only users with the Staff role can modify another user’s roles; additionally, no user can change their own role (or another user’s role) to one with higher privileges than their own. So, Staff users cannot create Academic Admins, Admissions users cannot create Registrars, and so on.

Managing roles

You can do three things with user roles: add them, remove them, and inactivate them.

Adding roles

You can add user roles to a person when adding them as a new person. You can also go to any person's profile and edit their user roles:

1. Go to the person's profile.
2. Under the profile picture, click edit roles.
3. Select the role from the drop-down and click Add. The list of user roles you can add to a person depends on what's permitted by your own user roles.
4. Repeat steps 3 as often as you need to. When you're all done, click Save.

After giving someone a role, you can later remove that role or change its status to Inactive.

Removing and deactivating

Removing a role takes away the person's permissions in Populi. It can also hide information you've collected about that person—for example, removing the Student role will obscure their transcript and other academic records. Deactivating a role "pauses" those permissions for that person; it will not hide any of the role-specific data you have for that person.

1. Go to the person's profile.
2. Under the profile picture, click edit roles.
3. If you wish to remove a role, click .
4. If you wish to deactivate a role, uncheck the box next to it.
   • Removing or deactivating the Student role will prompt you for an Exit Reason. Read more about student exits.
5. Repeat step 3/4 as often as you need to. When you're all done, click Save.

User role descriptions

Here's the list of what each role can see and do in Populi. If you give a user more than one of these roles, they will have the access and abilities of all of those roles.

Important! If certain things are not mentioned in a role description, then the role in question gives a user no access to the thing not mentioned. For example, Admissions says nothing about Billing or Financial Aid—that's because the role gives you no access whatsoever to that information.

Everyone

Every Populi user gets basic access (even those without specific roles): Home, My Profile, Email*, Calendar, and Files. They can edit their own contact information, and view others' Public contact information.

*Email is optional for all users if you've integrated Populi with whatever Google is calling their apps suite this week.

Academic roles

Academic Admin

The Academic Admin role gives a user access to all academic information at your school. Academic Admins are automatically given the Staff role; additionally...

• They have full read/write access to everything in Home.
• They can’t enroll in or teach courses; they can, however, view and edit all course information (including assignments, grades, enrollment info, etc.).
• They have full read/write access to all information on Profiles except for Financial (also, see Discipline).
• They can give any person the following roles: Academic Auditor, Admissions, Advisor, Campus Life, Discipline, Faculty, Registrar, Staff, Student, and Teaching Assistant.

Registrar

The Registrar role gives a user access to almost all academic information at your school. Registrars are automatically given the Staff role.

• They have full read/write access to everything in Home except for Settings.
• They can’t enroll in or teach courses; they can, however, view and edit all course information (including assignments, grades, enrollment info, etc.).
• They have full read/write access to all information on Profiles except for Financial (also, see Discipline).
• They can give others the Admissions, Advisor, Campus Life, Faculty, Staff, Student, and Teaching Assistant roles.

Academic Auditor

Academic Auditors have read-only access to all academic and academic-related information at your school.

• DO NOT give this role to regular students who wish to audit courses! The Student role lets people enroll in and audit courses.
• They have read-only access to these sections of Home: Home, My Profile, Files, Academics, Advising. Within Academics, they can see everything except Settings.
• They can view all course details.
• They have full read-only access to all information on Profiles except for Financial.
• They cannot give any person any user role.
• In Account > Security, you can control whether Academic Auditors can view course evaluations.

Advisor

Advisors have complete read-only access to the academic information for the students they are advising.

• They can register the student for courses on the Profile > Registration screen during online enrollment periods.
• They can view contact information for their Advised students.
• They cannot give any person any user role.

Discipline

The Discipline role, when paired with another role with access to the Profile > Student view, gives the user read/write access to student disciplinary records.

• If not paired with a role that can access Profile > Student, the Discipline role only permits a user to see items on a person's Activity Feed marked as visible to the Discipline role. This limitation includes the Faculty role.
• Academic Admins can add and view disciplinary records for any student.
• Advisors can see whether their advised students have disciplinary records, but cannot read them. Paired with the Discipline role, they can then read those records.

Faculty and Teaching Assistant

Faculty and Teaching Assistants have comprehensive access to the courses in which they are so listed.

• ...unless they are set to Hidden (students cannot see that they are observing the course) or Read-only (they can see everything regular faculty can, but cannot otherwise interact with the course).
• They cannot change basic course information (e.g. abbreviation, meeting times, etc.).
• If the Enrollment setting (on Course > Info) is set to allow faculty to manage enrollment, then course Faculty can manage all enrollment functions for that course—including enrolling students, changing student status, and changing course names on the Roster.
• Faculty cannot unfinalize courses.
• They can see public contact information.

Student

The Student role lets a person enroll in or audit courses. It also prompts Populi to begin recording an academic history for that person.

• For all courses, they have read-only access to Dashboard, Info, Assignments, and Calendar.
• If enrolled in a course, they can interact with assignments, lessons, discussions, and tests. They can also create new discussions. If enabled on Course > Info, Auditing students can have similar access.
• On their own profiles, they can see the Bulletin Board, Info, Student, and Financial views.
• On Student, they can read their transcript, degree audit, and any information entered in the right column (Courses, Degrees, etc.). They can export an unofficial transcript, schedule, and grade report.
• On Financial, they can read all of their financial and financial aid information, make payments, download statements and 1098-Ts, work on financial aid applications, and accept/decline financial aid awards.
• On other people's Profiles, they can see all public contact information for college staff, faculty, and other students.

Admissions roles

Admissions Admin

Admissions Admins have access to all admissions information at your school. They have unique access to Admissions > Settings; this includes application design, lead routing, inquiry form settings, and custom admissions fields.

Admissions Admin users are automatically given the Staff role; additionally...

• They have full read/write access to everything under Home except the Academics view.
• They can’t enroll in or teach courses.
• They have full read/write access to all information on Profiles in the Activity Feed, Info, and Admissions views. They can see a faculty user's Faculty view.
• They can give others the Admissions, Student, and Staff roles.

Admissions

Admissions users have access to all admissions information at your school, except for Admissions > Settings.

Admissions users are automatically given the Staff role; additionally...

• They have full read/write access to everything under Home except the Academics view.
• They can’t enroll in or teach courses.
• They have full read/write access to all information on Profiles in the Activity Feed, Info, and Admissions views. They can see a faculty user's Faculty view.
• They can give others the Admissions, Student, and Staff roles.

Financial roles

Financial Admin

The Financial Admin role gives a user access to all financial information at your school. It has complete read/write access to all billing- and accounting-related information; it has read-only access to financial aid. Financial Admins are automatically given the Staff role; additionally...

• They have read/write access to all information and settings in Billing, Accounting, Donations, Campus Life, and Bookstore.
• They have read-only access to Financial Aid; they also have the ability to complete a disbursement batch.
• They can give others the Financial Admin, Student Billing, Bookstore Admin, Bookstore, Campus Life, Donations, and Staff roles.

Financial Aid

The Financial Aid role gives a user access to all financial information at your school. It has complete read/write access to all Financial Aid information; its access to billing and accounting information is read-only. Financial Aid users are automatically given the Staff role; additionally...

• They have read/write access to all information and settings in Financial Aid.
• That is, except for disbursement batches. They can process disbursement batches up until the final step.
• They have read-only access to the information in Billing and Accounting.
• They have read/write access to all financial aid information for anyone in Populi.
• They can give others the Financial Aid and Staff roles.

Student Billing

The Student Billing role gives a user access to all billing information at your school. Student Billing users are automatically given the Staff role.

• They have read/write access to all information in Financial > Billing, except for Settings.
• They can give others the Staff role.

Donations

The Donations role gives a user access to all Donations information at your school, with the exception of Donation Settings. Donations users are automatically given the Staff role.

Financial Auditor

The Financial Auditor role gives a user read-only access to all financial information at your school.

• This includes all information in the main Financial view: Billing, Accounting, Financial Aid, Donations, and the main Financial > Settings view.
• Additionally, they can view everything in Bookstore.
• They can view all financial information on profiles, including Billing, Financial Aid, and Donations.
• On Profiles, they can also view the same items available to a Staff user, including things like contact info, etc. (even on private Profiles).

Staff and other roles

Staff

The Staff role gives a user access to basic information for people and organizations.

• They have read/write access to these sections of Home: Home, My Profile, Files, Contacts, and Communications.
• They can manage the News feed via Home > Manage News.
• On Profiles, they have read/write access to the Activity Feed, Bulletin Board, and Info views. They can also add and edit tags. They cannot see any academic information on the Student view, nor can they see financial information on the Campus Life or Financial views.
• Any Staff user can be added as an Account Administrator or Billing Contact.
• They can give other users the Staff role.

Campus Life

Campus Life gives a user access to all the functions in Campus Life, except for Settings. Campus Life users automatically get the Staff role.

• They have read/write access to these sections of Home: Home, My Profile, Files, Contacts, Campus Life, and Communications.
• On Profiles, they have read/write access to the Activity Feed, Bulletin Board, Info, and Campus Life views. They can also add and edit Tags. They cannot see any academic information on the Student view.
• They can add Campus Life fees and room/meal plans to student accounts; they otherwise have no access to financial information.
• They can give other users the Staff role.

Bookstore Admin

Bookstore Admin gives a user read/write access to all components of Bookstore—everything from processing Bookstore orders (Point of Sale and online), viewing reports, adding/updating items and inventory, and editing/updating all Bookstore settings. Because their workflows might involve accessing or updating a customer's contact info, they are automatically given the Staff role.

Bookstore

Bookstore gives a user the ability to run day-to-day operations in Populi Bookstore—processing Bookstore orders (Point of Sale and online) and viewing Bookstore reports. They do not have access to Bookstore Settings.

Library Admin

The Library Admin role gives a user complete access to all Library information and settings. Library Admin users are automatically given the Staff and Library Staff roles.

• They have read/write access to all Library Settings.
• They have complete read/write access to all resource- and library-related information.
• In addition to Staff-level access to regular profiles, they have complete access to Patron profiles.

Library Staff

The Library Staff role gives a user the ability to run day-to-day operations in Populi Library.

• They can run basic Library workflows (Check-in/out, Circulation, Pull List, etc.)
• They have complete read/write access to all Patron-related information.
• By default, they cannot manage Resources or Library Settings.
  • In Library > Settings, the Library Staff can manage resources setting lets Library Staff add, edit, and delete resources and copies.
• Library Staff has complete access to Patron profiles.

Library Patron

Library Patrons can go to Populi Library and search for resources, place holds, and leave reviews and recommendations. This article fully describes their access to Library.

• If a user already has either the Student, Faculty, or Staff role, then he already has access to Library.
• Only give this role to people outside of your school who otherwise do not have access to Library.