Override permissions

Override permissions in Moodle 1.9

Overrides are specific permissions designed to override a role in a specific context, allowing you to "tweak" your permissions as required. Overriding does not create a new role. It modifies an existing role and affects all users assigned to that role in the context

For example, users with the Student role can normally start new discussions in forums. Suppose there is a particular forum in which you want to restrict this capability. Within the forum, set an override that PREVENTS the capability for Students to "Start new discussions."

If you want to prevent only a few selected students from starting discussions in the forum, you cannot do it by overriding the Student role, since doing so would affect all Students. You need a new role. Unfortunately, you (as a teacher) cannot create one. Only the administrator can create new roles. The best solution is to ask the administrator to create a copy of the Student role. Then, within the forum, override the copied role as described in the paragraph above. Finally, assign the selected students to this role within the forum.

Overrides can also be used to "open up" areas of your site and courses to give users extra permissions where it makes sense. For example, you may want to experiment giving Students the ability to grade some assignments.

The interface for overriding permissions is similar to the one for defining roles, except sometimes only relevant capabilities are shown, and you will also see some capabilities highlighted to show you what the permission for that role would be WITHOUT any override active (i.e. when your override is set to NOT SET).

Note: Prior to Moodle 1.9, the override permissions page was named "Override roles".

Enabling teachers to override permissions

By default, only administrators are able to override permissions. You can enable teachers to do so as follows:

1. Access Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles
2. Edit the teacher role and change the capability moodle/role:override to allow
3. Click the button "Save changes"
4. Click the tab "Allow role overrides" (in Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles)
5. Check the appropriate box to allow a teacher to override the student role
6. Click the button "Save changes"

If preferred, a new role for overriding permissions may be created and selected teachers assigned to it.

See also

• Demonstrates how to enable teachers to override permissions
• Video tutorial on overriding the student role