Manager role

Manager role abilities

The default Manager role enables users assigned the role to access courses and modify them, as well as perform certain administrative level tasks related to courses, users, grade settings, etc.

Unlike the administrator role, the Manager role is a 'real role', whose capabilities you can edit, but is similar to Administrator (but much safer to use) due to its broad default powers. As a normal role, like Course Creator or Teacher, while the Manager role has almost very many capabilities by default, you can edit that role if you choose.

(The way permission checks work in the Moodle code is that there is a function called has_capability. For admins, has_capability will always return true, no matter how the roles are set up. Thus there is no way to edit what permissions an Administrator has.)

Adopting a best-practice based on the Principle of Least Privilege suggests that Admins should normally use a Manager role, and not use an Administrator account, similar to the way you are recommended not to log into Linux as root.

The Manager role therefore allows a site Administrator to give very powerful roles to others who are assigned a Manager role, but without having to give them a full Administrator role.

Assigning the role of Manager at the Site level

You can give someone the Manager role sitewide (to enable them for instance to add new users) by going to Site Administration>Users>Permissions>Assign system roles, selecting the Manager role and moving over your chosen user.

When you do so, users in that role will have access to only some of the items in Site administration. They do not have access to areas such as Security, Server, Plugins, Appearance, or Advanced Features, which are reserved for those in the Site administrators group. They have access to most of the tools for User, Course and Grade system settings and tools.

Specifically the Site-wide Manager role can see these in Site administration:

   Competencies
       Migrate frameworks
       Import competency framework
       Export competency framework
       Competency frameworks
       Learning plan templates
   Badges
       Badges settings
       Manage badges
       Add a new badge
   Language
       Language customisation 
   Appearance
       Default Dashboard page
       Default profile page
       Manage tags
       User tours
   Front page
       Front page settings
   Users
       Accounts
          Browse list of users
          Bulk user actions
          Add a new user
          Cohorts
          Upload users
          Upload user pictures
       Permissions
          Define roles
          Assign system role
          Check system permissions
          Capability overview
          Assign user roles to cohort
   Courses
       Manage courses and categories
       Add a category
       Restore course
       Backups
          General backup defaults
          General import defaults
          Automated backup setup
   Grades
       General settings
       Grade category settings
       Grade item settings
       Scales
       Outcomes (if enabled on site)
       Letters
       Report settings
          Grader report
          Grade history
          Overview report
          User report
    Plugins
       Question types
          Question preview defaults
   Reports
       Comments
       Backups
       Logs
       Live logs
       Performance overview
       Security overview
       Statistics (if enabled on site)
       Event monitoring rules

Notes:

• Some of these can further restricted by editing specific capabilities of the role, e.g., create users, upload users from a file, manual enrolments, managing cohorts, language customisation, et cet.
• Manager has access to Front page same as with other courses (as it is technically a course).
• Manager has access to most system level reports but not the Configuration report.
• Manager has the ability to assign other users as a sitewide Manager
• Also, a Manager has the ability to edit the role of Manager itself - to disable this, you could prohibit the Create and manage roles moodle/role:manage capability

Assigning the role of Manager at the Category level

The Manager role can also be assigned in the context Category rather than sitewide.

Do this if you want someone to be able to have access to all the courses in a single category and manage them, but do not want them to have access to any of Site administration tools.

Assign this as follows: Site administration > Courses > Add/edit courses > (select a category) > Edit this category > Administration block: Assign roles > Manager > (select user) Add

Notes:

• A category-level manager is so only for the assigned category: to manage more than one category, you will need to assign them that role in each category separately
• Category-level managers also manage any sub-categories beneath the category they are assigned, including create new subcategories and move courses
• They can create courses in the their assigned categories
• A category-level manager will not have as many capabilities as a site-level manager, since certain capabilities can only be applied in the system context i.e. via a system role
• Regarding the capability to login as another user, for courses within the category that they manage, a category-level manager can only login as another course participant and browse within that course only

Note that in some commands are in the Administration block. Managers must Turn editing on in order to have Edit category and Add category links. The screenshot below is a view of the Administration block for a Category level Manager with Editing turned on, showing the Edit this category and Add a sub-category commands:

See also

• Site administrators