Project Panorama gives you control over who can access projects and what capabilities they have. This starts by assigning users an appropriate “user role.” WordPress has several user roles built in such as subscriber, author and administrator. When you create or edit a user in WordPress you can choose which user role they have.
Panorama uses the same user management system as WordPress. To add a user to Panorama, simply login to WordPress and go to Users > Add New. You’ll provide the users name and e-mail address before selecting the appropriate user level.
User Levels
Panorama adds three new user roles in addition to taking advantage of the existing WordPress user roles. The list below details each user role and their Panorama capabilities:
- Subscriber – Can access any project they have been assigned to on the front end, they can upload and approve documents (they can’t see projects or anything else on the back end.) Typically clients should have the “subscriber” role.
- Project Owner – Can access any project they have been assigned to on the front end, update tasks from the front end and can edit their projects in the back end.
- Project Manager – Can create, edit and access any project and can upload media.
- Project Creator – Can create and manage their own projects or any project they’ve been assigned to
- Editor – Can do everything a project manager can but can also edit pages, posts, etc…
- Administrator – Can do everything (as you’d expect)
For a more detailed breakdown of each role, see below.
Project Owner
Users who are assigned the “Project Owner” role can only see and edit projects they are assigned. They are unable to add new projects or see any project that wasn’t assigned to them (including open projects.) Project owners who are logged in will only see their projects when on a page that includes the project listing shortcode.
Assigning a project to a project owner is done by:
- Editing the project you’d like to grant access to
- Selecting the “Access” tab in the overview section of the page.
- Checking “restrict access to specific users”
- Adding a user and selecting the account you’d like to give access to.
Project Creator
Users who are assigned the “Project Creator” role can add, edit, delete and publish their own projects. They can’t see or edit any other projects unless they’ve been assigned to the project by someone else. If assigned to the project, they can edit and update said project.
They can’t however, access any other parts of the site nor can they can’t create posts, pages, etc…
Project Manager
Users who are assigned the “Project Manager” role can add, edit, delete and publish projects. They can’t however, access any other parts of the site. They can’t create posts, pages, etc… This allows you to have users who only manage projects but can’t touch the rest of your site.
Administrators and Editors
Administrators and editors are given all access to managing projects, much like Project Managers.
Subscribers
Typically, clients should use the “subscriber” role. This will allow your clients to login to their project without the ability to edit or update the projects themselves. If you’d like to hide the WordPress dashboard from clients all together consider using a plugin like WP Hide Dashboard.
You may also want your clients to login and be directed to a page that lists all of their projects. If this is the case, try installing Theme My Login. This will allow you to create a public facing login form, for example at http://www.yoursite.com/login, and then choose to redirect clients to a page that uses the project listing shortcode, maybe at http://www.yoursite.com/dashboard.
After you’ve created a project you’ll probably want users to see it. Most customers also need to restrict projects to specific users. Once you’ve assigned users to a project as detailed in the access management documentation there are two ways you can have users login to access their projects.