For each project (phase) on your platform, you can define access rights (viewing rights and participation rights) for different types of users or user groups. Learn how you can easily create smart and manual user groups and define access rights in your projects.
Creating manual or smart groups of users + 🎥
It is easy to organize registered users into manual and smart groups. You can use these groups to do targeted communication and create projects with group-specific access. Click on the + sign above ‘Users’ in the Users tab and create your groups.
Note:
It can be helpful to create groups to target outreach & communication (ie. specific email campaigns to students)
You can create “private” working space for commissions, committee, and working groups
Manual groups allow you to simply add your selected users in a manual user group you created. Simple go to ‘Users’, create a manual group and then add the user to that group manually.
Smart Groups allow you to subdivide your users into groups based on their profile settings. These groups can then be given permission rights to access certain projects.
STEP 1: Determine on the basis of which information you want to subdivide your users
The domicile can be an important criterion. Think about projects that take place at neighbourhood level. And for other projects you may only want to ask people from certain professional groups or age groups.
The 'Registration' tab in 'Settings' shows all current registration fields.
STEP 2: Create a Smart Group 👩🔧
Next, each registration field can be used as a condition when creating a Smart Group. 'Users' will show an overview of all users on the right and of all existing groups on the left. Smart Groups are indicated with a ⚡️.
You can then determine one or more conditions that users must meet to be part of this group.
For example, you can determine that 'Lives in' 'has as value' a certain neighbourhood, if you only want to add residents of that neighbourhood to the group.
It is important to know that when using multiple conditions, a user must always comply with each of these conditions.
STEP 3: Select multiple options in a Smart Group rule
You can now select multiple options at once to define a smart group rule. You can use the AND or the OR logic here. This allows for a lot of flexibility when creating and using smart groups on your platform. An example to clarify: If you ask your users during registration in which neighborhood they live, you can now define a smart group rule saying: "User lives in Neighborhood X OR Neighborhood Y".
Setting access rights per project (phase) + 🎥
To set up participation rights go to the "Access rights" tab of the project settings.
You can define two types of permissions, or access rights:
Viewing rights (on a project level): who can see this project on the platform?
Participation rights (on a project, or project phase level): who can contribute to the project (phase)? Which actions can be taken by which participants?
Viewing rights: decide who can see the content
For each project you can decide who can access it on the platform and view its content. Three types of permissions are possible.
A project can be seen by :
Everyone: anyone who visits the platform will be able to see the project and browse its content, although they will need to log in to participate. If you choose this option, the content of the project is therefore also accessible to non-registered visitors to the platform (although they will need to log in to participate).
Administrators and project managers: only people with admin rights to the project will be able to view the project on the platform. This option is regularly used to allow admins to test and view the project before it is launched to participants.
Certain user groups: only participants belonging to certain user groups will be able to see the project on the platform. As access to the project is restricted, participants will first have to log in to the platform to be able to view the project.
The default option is "Everyone", so if you don't make any changes, everyone who visits your platform will be able to view the project.
To set up viewing rights, go to the "Access rights" tab of the project settings in the admin panel of the platform and select the desired option in the "Who can see this project?" section.
Participation rights: define who can contribute to the project
For each (phase of a) project, and for each type of action (posting input, commenting, voting, filling in a survey...) you can decide who can participate.
For each of the actions you decide to have active in the project you can define who can take that action. So you can define that per project (phase) and/or per action relevant to that project (phase), such as giving input, voting, commenting, filling out a survey, etc. Four types of permissions are possible
Participation (certain types of actions) in a phase of a project can be open to:
Users with confirmed email: all participants who have provided an email and confirmed it will be able to participate. This is a great option for lowering project participation requirements and increasing the chances of engagement.
Registered users: all participants registered on the platform and having viewing rights for this project will be able to participate.
Administrators and project managers: only those with admin rights for this project will be able to participate.
Certain user groups: only participants on the platform who belong to certain user groups and who have viewing rights for this project will be able to participate.
Everyone (only available with surveys) : in the context of surveys, it is possible to open participation to visitors who are not registered or logged in on the platform. In this case, any person visiting the platform can take part in the survey without providing any demographic or contact information.
To set up participation rights go to the "Access rights" tab of the project settings in the admin side of the platform and select the desired option in the "Who can contribute (per project phase)?" section.
Custom, participation-specific demographic questions
If you have a Premium license, you can set additional requirements for participation for a phase/action. In addition to requiring participants to (for example) provide an email and confirm it, you may also require users to answer project-relevant demographic questions like zip code, socio-economic status or other for their participation to count. These questions will only be asked of those users who have not answered them before, and responses will get stored as user data under each users profile. These responses may be used to create Smart Groups in the future.
Until very recently these demographic questions were set at the platform level, and every user taking action had to answer all of them no matter how relevant or not they were to the specific project or action they were engaging with. From now on, if you have a Premium license, you will be able to customize these fields at the phase/participation context level, which will enable you to no longer have to force users to complete long, demographic question-filled registration flows, and instead, only ask what you need of the user at each moment.
