Overview of Bulk Permissions Management with Academic Levels
Academic workflow levels in Interfolio Review, Promotion & Tenure (RPT) give users a way to manage access to cases for many users at once. Unit Administrators can manage access to cases at individual case review steps based on unit hierarchy instead of by user roles. Unit Administrators can also control case access based on logic related both to the user's role and unit the case is in (such as which department/school).
About Academic Workflow Levels
Each unit that makes up an institution is labeled with an academic level according to the institution’s hierarchy. For example, if an institution is named Interfolio University and is made up of a hierarchy of University > School > Department, then each of those levels of the hierarchy would be academic levels. For example:
- Using a level-named University or Institution to tag the very top-level unit (such as Blake University).
- Using a level named College or School to tag every unit that is a college/school (such as School of Engineering).
- Using a level named Department to tag every unit that is a department (such as the Department of Biology).
Academic levels for an institution are managed from the Academic Levels tab under Users & Groups on the navigation bar within RPT.
Using Levels in Templates and Cases to Manage Case Access
Prior to the release of this feature, case access was governed primarily by user role, with recusal on an individual basis. With academic workflow levels, users no longer need to individually monitor recusals for Unit Administrators or other users in order to prevent them from accessing cases. Instead, access to a case will be controlled by which level of the academic hierarchy the case takes place in, and which level each user’s role is tied to.
Note that users can still manage access by recusing or un-recusing individual Unit Administrators and Case Managers.
Managing Case Access at Case Review Steps
Within each template (and therefore each case), each individual workflow step can be assigned one or more academic levels. For any given workflow step, the only people who can see the case are the assigned committee members and the administrators and case managers of the academic levels who have been granted access to that step. For example, setting the level of step “Dean Reviews Candidate Dossier,” to be University, School, and Department. In this example, only users who have the Unit Administrator, or (new) Case Manager role at the University, School, and Department levels will be able to access the case while it is at that step. When the case moves to the next step, access to it will be governed by that step’s assigned levels.