Is there a way to make it so the SuperAdmin user can see <all> collections, regardless of whether they have been shared with the SuperAdmin user?

[deth...@owu.edu]

We are using ResourceSpace to store our ever-growing University Communications photo archive.

We currently have it set up so that there is a "student worker" user that has the ability to create collections, with the intention being that once a collection has been made, that user will share the collection with the superadmin (and others, as needed) so that we can pull the final chosen images to use in a print piece. That way, we can have the student worker choose photos while we concentrate on other things.

At any rate, our student worker recently created a new collection but forgot to share the collection with us. I figured it would be no problem...the superadmin should be able to see all collections, regardless of whether they're shared with that user.

At least, that's what was in my head about the nature of a "superadmin"...they should have access beyond a "mortal being" when it comes to systems...at least, that's how all the other systems we use treat their superadmin users.

So, imagine my surprise when I logged into ResourceSpace as the superadmin user and couldn't see any collections that weren't explicitly shared with me.

I did some searching online and didn't find an answer to this particular problem (but I did find conversations in this Google Group and elsewhere involving people wanting the same thing...dating back to mid-2012!...none were resolved to the point of an actual solution, however).

At any rate, is there a setting I'm missing somewhere that would allow this level of access for the superadmin user or is this limitation for a specific reason (if so, what's the reason)?

Thanks in advance for any help that can be provided.

Doug Thompson
Manager of Web and Electronic Communications
Ohio Wesleyan University

[Allison Stec]

Doug -

There are three types of collections - private, public, and themed. By default, a new collection is set to private.

As someone who's used, managed, and developed RS I can tell you that I would not be a happy camper if "my collections" contained everyone else's private collections as well as my own...even as a superadmin! For a small application user base this isn't as much of a concern, but when you start to think about 10, 20, 30+ users the amount of private collections made by other could far outweigh my own, and I could see the collections I created being much harder to find.

Public collections are meant to be viewed by all. You can group public collections together into themes. There are some usergroup settings that allow you to restrict the availability of public collections by theme. This may be useful to you...maybe not.

Here's a little info about collections from the wiki: http://wiki.resourcespace.org/index.php/Collections,_Public_Collections_and_Themes

None of this really solves your issue, though...

To my knowledge, there's no setting that will give you what you want. That being said, as a superadmin you can log into other people's accounts via the manage users page (click on edit). This would allow you to share your student worker's private collection with the superadmins should your student worker not be available to do so.

Allison Stec
Senior Developer & Asset Management Specialist
Colorhythm
http://www.colorhythm.com

Main Office: +1 415-399-9921
Fax: +1 415-399-9928

as...@colorhythm.com

--
ResourceSpace: Open Source Digital Asset Management
http://www.resourcespace.org
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ResourceSpace" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to resourcespac...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[deth...@owu.edu]

I didn't even think of the ability for the superadmin to log in as the other users. That'll do for my purposes.

FYI, we only have about 6 users, so no concerns there.

Thanks for the info!

[Yadin Flammer]

Has anything been done to address this in the last couple years?  We're more than a little surprised to find there is no way for even the super admin to view a list of all private collections (and owners).  That's a rather serious need.  It's also highly desirable to be able to allocate that permission to another group as our "curators" are not given super admin for obvious security and stability reasons, but need to look after the "editors/uploaders".  We can table the second part as a feature enhancement, but the first is really something of a deficiency.  Since searches exist for resources not assigned to a collection, but you can't search for collection that are not public, these things are hidden, and nothing should ever be hidden from root at the very least.

[Allison Stec]

What’s the value in seeing other users’ private collections for a super admin? I don’t know that a good case has been made for this. You can always create a report of all private collections.

I see the value in knowing that some resources don’t belong to any collection. You can use this information to review metadata to see if their search ability could be improved or if they’ve been somehow hidden from the majority of the users.

What’s the problem you’re trying to resolve by seeing all the private collections?

Allison Stec

On September 26, 2017 at 2:55:33 PM, Yadin Flammer (ebonw...@gmail.com) wrote:

Has anything been done to address this in the last couple years?  We're more than a little surprised to find there is no way for even the super admin to view a list of all private collections (and owners).  That's a rather serious need.  It's also highly desirable to be able to allocate that permission to another group as our "curators" are not given super admin for obvious security and stability reasons, but need to look after the "editors/uploaders".  We can table the second part as a feature enhancement, but the first is really something of a deficiency.  Since searches exist for resources not assigned to a collection, but you can't search for collection that are not public, these things are hidden, and nothing should ever be hidden from root at the very least.

--
ResourceSpace: Open Source Digital Asset Management

http://www.resourcespace.com

[Douglas Thompson]

I think the problem here is that Yadin (and me, before Alison set me straight with the info about ResourceSpace's ability to have the SuperAdmin user log in as any of the users in the system, which has allowed me to overcome the problem completely) comes at this with a programming-oriented (or server architecture) mindset, where the "root" user has access to everything.

The SuperAdmin user in ResourceSpace is sort of like a "root" user...but not exactly, hence the disconnect...

At least, that's how I'm interpreting things :)

[Yadin Flammer]

Simply put, employee supervision.  We're running this service for community use, not personal use.  As such, we'd like the ability to see that someone is not creating personal collections (private) as opposed to creating public libraries.  A report showing private collections (and their owners) would be a fine start, but there is no such thing, so I'm not sure what you're referring to there.  If there was such a report, that would be great because then our curators with report access could see them as well, not just me the sys admin.

Masquerading as 30 different users on a regular basis is limited to the super admin and is not in any way practical, so that's not a solution for us.

[Yadin Flammer]

We're still seeking a solution for this.  To restate the problem:

We have an uploader group.  These people can only upload and edit their own resources/ collections and can not make them public.

We have an admin group.  These are NOT super admins, they are not allowed to make user accounts for example.  These are the system curators that review what the uploaders did, and make it public.

The problem is, this is not possible at the collection level, because there is no way for the admin to see the collections of the uploaders.  They can only see the resources that are pending approval as a loose pile of stuff that is in no way organized.  They then have to make collections themselves and add the resources and then edit the new collection so all items are public.

This is not practical, and we can't understand how others have not been beating on this issue for years.

The simple solution is a permission bit we can set for the admin group that allows them to see ALL collections.  Then, they can view the uploader created collections (i.e. collection pending approval), not just the resources in them, and make the collection and resources public once verified.

To us, this seems like a basic function that is missing and desperately needed to smooth a typical workflow.  If there is something we're missing, or another way to do this same thing, please advise.  Otherwise, please please please get this up on the feature requests  :)

[ronnie zeiller]

Hi Yadin,

I am 100% with you.

If you think of a media library in a company there should not be any "private" collection and if there is one it is just to maintain a group of media files and the collection is deleted afterwords.
This is at least the way I show my customers.

We have a lot of people which upload images, then we have archivers of different company´s departments and then we have a group of admins. I wanted the admins to see all collections because it is handy in the collection window to work with and it is necessary that they know what is going on in the archive.

I wrote a plugin, which automatically adds all admins to every new collection which is made at upload. 
If you add a new admin then you have to run "add all admins to collections" (except the MyCollection of each user) again, so the new admin sees all collections.

The plugin worked with an older version of RS, but with the newest I think I had some problems which I have to correct (if I find the time...)

I can put it on my Github if you want to have a look at it.

[Frederick Yocum]

@Allison I agree to have all the collections associated with the super admin account will quickly render the collection bar and collections list useless. However, there are times when being able to access a private collection associated with a particular resource is useful. 

The resources uploaded by our many contributors end up being evaluated by three administrators. Often, when evaluating a photograph, it is helpful to see other photographs uploaded at the same time. If the admin is attached to a collection it will appear in the associated collections section of the resource data (if you have set to do so). To view the originating collection:

1) Note the ID

2) Log in as the resource contributor by clicking on the name in the Resource Panel

3) Search for the resource to see which collections it appears in

4) Navigate to the collection

5) Attach the admin account

6) Log out

7) Log in as admin

8) Review the resource

9) What rarely happens is to unattach the collection to keep the admin collection list clean.

Relatively straightforward — tedious if you have to do this more than once a day. It would be helpful to be able to see all the collections a resource is associated with and be able to navigate to the relevant one without attaching to it. 

[kgchar...@gmail.com]

In this instance it looks to me like you want to be able to see if there are any private collections.  If there are any such collections, you want to know the name of the collection and who created them and did not make them public. It does not seem to me that you necessarily want or need to know contents of any offending collection.  If you are not interested as such in the content of the collection but just if there are any collections which are not public, perhaps you can creates yourself a simple report.

You can create a new report form Admin>System>Manage reports, giving it the name of something like "Private Collections".

In the Query put something like

SELECT ref, name, user, created FROM collection WHERE public = 0

and save that.

Running the report by going to Admin>Reports, select the report you created, and specify a date period (something last specific number of days = 100000 if yo want everything or just the last year if yo run it intermittently).   In the this report you created you get to see any private collections on your system, the name the collection has been given, the user ID that created the collection and the date created.

In your case if all collections should be Public, there should be no collections in your report.  Ig there are you can follow this up with the identified user.

Keith C

Media Partnership Co-ordinator

[Frederick Yocum]

@Kieth

Thanks for the report. With a little more MySQL magic the collection name becomes a link to the collection and the owner of the collection can become a full name and an email link.

SELECT collection.ref AS 'ID', CONCAT('<a href="https://yourwebsite.org/pages/search.php?search=!collection', collection.ref, '&k=">', collection.name, '</a>') AS 'Collection Name', /* collection.name AS 'Collection name'-- Raw query */ CONCAT('<a href="https://yourwebsite.org/pages/team/team_user_edit.php?ref=16', user,'">', user.fullname, ' in ', usergroup.name, '</a>') AS 'Owner', /* user, Raw query */ DATE_FORMAT(collection.created, '%D %M %Y') shippedDate /* collection.created AS 'Created on' */ FROM collection JOIN user ON collection.user=user.ref JOIN usergroup ON user.usergroup=usergroup.ref WHERE public = 0 ORDER BY collection.name

This makes it fairly trivial to see a private collection, but it doesn’t make it easier to tell what private collections a specific resource is in. What would be really useful would be a link on the resource panel which when clicked would reveal a list of all of the collections a resource appears in by date. That would make it easier to find related resources.