Questions about Guestbook Data Access and Notification Emails in Dataverse

[Tutasi]

 Dear Dataverse community,

We have received some questions from one of the institutions using our repository regarding the Guestbook functionality. We would appreciate your clarification on the following points:  

1. Guestbook Data Visibility: 

Our understanding is that only users with "Edit Dataverse" permissions at the Dataverse collection level can access the Guestbook responses, and not dataset-level users. However, during testing, giving a colleague "Contributor" permissions on a dataset did not allow them to see Guestbook responses via Edit Dataset, whereas administrators can. Can you confirm which specific roles or permissions are required for a user to view Guestbook responses?

2. Email Notifications to Dataset Contacts: 

We had the impression that enabling the Guestbook would also trigger email notifications to the dataset contact when someone downloads files or fills in the Guestbook. However, this doesn't seem to be happening in our instance. Does the Guestbook functionality include automated email notifications to the dataset contact by default?

Thank you very much for your assistance and clarification! 

Best regards,

[Julian Gautier]

Hi Tutasi,

About guestbook data visibility, you wrote that "giving a colleague "Contributor" permissions on a dataset did not allow them to see Guestbook responses via Edit Dataset, whereas administrators can." The guestbook option is on the Edit dropdown menu on the dataverse collection page. It's never on the Edit Dataset dropdown menu on the dataset page.

So to let your colleague see the guestbook responses, you would need to give them "Admin" permissions on the dataverse collection that contains that dataset, since the "Admin" role lets users see that Edit dropdown menu on the dataverse collection page.

About email notifications to dataset contact, the guestbook functionality has two modes, and for the "Guestbook at download" mode - where someone trying to download a file that they have access to sees and fills out the guestbook, then the file starts downloading - Dataverse doesn't send automated email notifications to the address that's in the dataset contact (the email address that's in the dataset's Point of Contact Email field).

I got the impression that you're referring to this "Guestbook at download" mode. 

For the "Guestbook at request" mode - where someone sees the guestbook when they try to download a restricted file they don't have access to - Dataverse sends an email about the request and the email includes what the requestor wrote in the guestbook. The email is sent to the email addresses of any accounts that have edit permissions on the dataset.

Does that help clarify how things currently work?

Best regards,

Julian

Julian Gautier (he/him)

Product Research Specialist, IQSS

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