MiVideo: Channel Management and Mediaspace Site Roles

Environment

MiVideo Mediaspace

Referred to as “mini-portals”, channels are personally managed, user generated media collections in MiVideo. They can be configured in a variety of ways from fully open collaborative collections to private collections locked down to specific groups. Viewers can subscribe to channels to be notified when new content is added. See related Channel articles for more information.

Issue

Site roles determine what an authenticated user can do in Mediaspace. They work in conjunction with channel member entitlement roles and the channel configuration settings made by the site administrator. Site roles take precedence over channel entitlement roles.

Resolution

Channel Member Entitlement Roles

Channels have four entitlement roles:

  • Managers: can manage channel members, moderate media (if moderation is enabled), publish media, view media.
  • Moderators: can moderate media (if moderation is enabled), publish media, view media.
  • Contributors: can publish media that will need moderator approval, view media.
  • Members: can view media.

In addition, any viewer and channel member can sign up to be a Subscriber.

  • Subscribers receive an email notification when new media is published to the channel.
  • Channel subscription must be enabled in the channel settings for viewers to subscribe to the channel. 
  • In order to subscribe, the viewer must have access to the channel. For example, any logged in (authenticated) user is able to subscribe to a Restricted channel. Channel types and access are discussed in the next section.

Only logged in (authenticated) users with U-M credentials can have a channel member entitlement role. If you have a use case to add a member who is not affiliated with the University, please see Can External Non-UM Guests Upload, Edit and Publish Media in Mediaspace?

Channel Types

Viewing access to a Public or Restricted channel is controlled by channel type. You'll add channel members when access is needed beyond viewing media in the channel.

Private channels require a channel membership in order to view media.

  • Public, restricted: viewable by anyone including anonymous (non-authenticated) users but only contributors, moderators, and managers can publish media. If your Mediaspace is locked down behind weblogin, anonymous users won't be able to access any part of your Mediaspace including these channels. Requires contributors, moderators, and managers to be logged in (authenticated) with U-M credentials.
  • Restricted: viewable by any logged in (authenticated) U-M user but only contributors, moderators, and managers can publish media. Requires contributors, moderators, and managers to be logged in (authenticated) with U-M credentials.
  • Private: only viewable by members, contributors, moderators, and managers and only contributors, moderators, and managers can publish media. Requires all members to be logged in (authenticated) with U-M credentials.

Mediaspace Site Roles and Channel Membership

Channel contributors, moderators, and managers have the ability to publish media to the channel. However, if the contributor, moderator or manager does not have a site role of privateOnlyRole or higher they will not be able upload and publish media to the channel. This is due to site roles taking precedence over channel entitlement roles.

These are the most common site roles:

  • anonymousRole: the non-authenticated user. Can view media in public channels. Can't upload or publish to the site.
  • viewerRole: the authenticated anonymous role. Can view media in public and restricted channels as well as any channel they are a member of. Can't upload or publish media, so granting a contributor, moderator, and manager channel role won't allow them the ability to perform those actions.
  • privateOnlyRole: can upload media and publish media to channels in which they are a contributor, moderator, or manager.
  • unmoderatedAdminRole: front-end administrator. Can upload and publish media to channels in which they are a contributor, moderator, or manager. 

Only logged in (authenticated) users with U-M credentials can have the viewerRole, privateOnlyRole, or unmoderatedAdminRole. If you have a use case to grant one of these roles to someone who is not affiliated with the University, please see Can External Non-UM Guests Upload, Edit and Publish Media in Mediaspace? or contact the ITS Service Center.

Add Channel Members

Channel managers can manually add members to the channel.

Depending on the number of members that need added to the channel, managing membership with an MCommunity group may be more efficient, see the Configure MCommunity Groups With Mediaspace article or contact the ITS Service Center. 

How to manually add a single member to the channel:

  1. Navigate to the user drop-down menu > My Channels.
  2. Click the edit pencil icon in the channel thumbnail. 
  3. Users tab > Add Users.
  4. Type in the uniqname. If they are in the database, the system will pop their name up in pick list. If they are not in the database, they need to login once to the Mediaspace site for their account to be created.
  5. Select the membership type.
  6. Click Add.

​​​​Manage Channel Members

Unless your Mediaspace site is configured to block channel member management, which is an unusual circumstance, channel managers can edit member permissions, transfer channel ownership, and remove members using the icons and links in the Actions column next to each user’s name on the members list.

  1. Navigate to the user drop-down menu > My Channels.
  2. Click the edit pencil icon in the channel thumbnail.
  3. Click the Users tab.

Change Member Role

  1. Click the edit pencil icon to edit a member's role.
  2. Update the permission level in the drop-down list.
  3. The pencil changes to a save icon that you must click to confirm your changes.

Remove Channel Member 

  1. Click the "X" icon to remove a channel member.
  2. Click Yes to confirm.
  3. Removing a member does not delete their account and you can add them back at any time.

Transfer Channel Ownership

  1. Click the set as owner "key" icon to transfer your channel ownership.
  2. Click Yes to confirm.
  3. You will still be a channel manager unless another manager changes your permissions.

Resources and Questions

For additional questions, please contact the ITS Service Center

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