Roles settings

User policies

The following settings may be changed by an administrator in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > User policies.

Role for visitors

Users who are not logged in to the site will be treated as if they have the role specified here, granted to them at the site context. The role of Guest is the default and the recommended setting for standard Moodle sites. The user will still be required to login to participate in an activity.

Role for guest

This option specifies the role that will automatically be assigned to the guest user. This role is also temporarily assigned to non enrolled users when they enter a course that allows guests without password.

Default role for all users

It is recommended that the default role for all users is set to Authenticated user. To set it to a custom role, the custom role must be assignable in the system context and have role archetype set to none.

Note: It is not recommended that the default role for all users is set to student, for reasons given in MDL-26805.

Auto-login guest

If not set, then visitors must click the "Login as a guest" button before entering a course which allows guest access.

Note: If auto-login guest is set, the guest login button also needs to be set to show (in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication), even though visitors won't necessarily use it.

Hide user fields

The following user fields appear on users' profile pages. Certain user fields are also listed on the course participants page. You can increase student privacy by hiding selected user fields.

Description, city/town, country, web page, ICQ number, Skype ID, Yahoo ID, AIM ID, MSN ID, last access, My courses and first access and groups

• User fields on users' profile pages are hidden from all users with the capability moodle/user:viewhiddendetails not set.
• User fields on the course participants page are hidden from all users with the capability moodle/course:viewhiddenuserfields not set.

Show user identity

Any of the following fields may be shown to users with the capability moodle/site:viewuseridentity when searching for users and displaying lists of users.

• ID number
• Email address
• Phone number
• Mobile phone
• Department
• Institution

This setting is useful for sites with large number of users, where the likelihood of users with the same name is high.

Locations where user identity fields are shown are as follows:

• User selectors (Assign roles in some places, groups, forum subscribers)
• Browse list of users
• Course participants
• Grader report
• Quiz reports
• SCORM reports
• Assignment submissions
• Course completion report
• Activity completion report
• Enroling users

Tip: Select only one or two fields that are mandatory at your institution. Do not select more than two field otherwise tables become very wide.

Enable Gravatar

Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally unique avatars.

An administrator can enable the use of gravatars in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > User policies. If a user has not uploaded a user picture, Moodle will check whether the user's email address has an associated gravatar and if so, will use the gravatar as the user's picture.

• Use your Gravatar in Moodle 2.2 screencast

Gravatar default image URL

In Moodle 2.3.3 onwards, if gravatars are enabled, an alternative default user picture may be specified. The options are:

• A gravatar default image - by entering a code such as mm. See https://en.gravatar.com/site/implement/images/ for codes of other gravatar default images.
• A specified image - by entering the image URL

If the field is left empty then the theme's default user picture is used.

Note: Prior to Moodle 2.3.3, gravatar integration stopped working. See MDL-35669 for details.

Unsupported role assignments

Unsupported role assignments are role assignments in contexts that are not marked as suitable for that role, such as course creator in activity or course, or teacher in the user context.

An administrator can check for any unsupported role assignments across the site in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Unsupported role assignments.