User policies

User policies

The following settings may be changed by an administrator in Administration > 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.

Deny Guest Access to a site altogether

Go to Site administration ► Plugins ► Authentication ► Manage authentication and there is a switch there that allows you to turn the Guest Access button off altogether.

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 Administration > 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 fields otherwise tables become very wide.

Full name format

See Additional name fields for details, also about the alternative full name format.

Maximum users per page

You can choose here the maximum number of users to be displayed when searching in courses, groups, cohorts etc. The default is 100 but if your Moodle site is very large you can increase the number here.

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 Administration > 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.

Unsupported role assignments

Unsupported role assignments are role assignments in contexts that make no sense for that role, such as the course creator role in the course or activity context, or the teacher role in the user context.

Prior to Moodle 2.0, there was no 'Context types where this role may be assigned' setting in the edit role form, and so any role could be assigned in any context. Upon upgrading a site from 1.9, any role assignments in contexts that make no sense for that role are listed as unsupported role assignments in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Unsupported role assignments.

In general, it is safe to delete all unsupported role assignments. In doing so, the worst that can happen is for a user to be unassigned a custom role; no other data loss will occur.