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Users Roles and Access Control
This page explains who can see and do what in Cafe-Grader: the roles a user can hold, and the three on/off switches that decide whether a problem or a whole course is visible. If you've ever wondered "why does my TA see an empty report?" — the answer is here.
Visual companion — Who Sees What: the same rules rendered as a role matrix and permission flowcharts, useful when you want to see the whole picture at once rather than read it.
Access is decided by two independent things:
- Your global role — almost everyone has none. The only one that changes what problems/reports you see is Admin.
- Your role within each group — you can be a Member, a Reporter, or an Editor of a group, and this can differ from group to group. (You might be a Member of one course and a Reporter of another.)
So "being a reporter" is not a global switch — it's something you are in a specific group. To let someone report on a course, you add them to that group with the Reporter role.
A group membership also has its own enabled flag. A disabled membership grants no role at all — not member, reporter, or editor — so disabling the row is a full per-group revocation without removing the person from the group.
| Role | Where it applies | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| Member (student) | per group | Submit to the course's problems; see their own submissions. |
| Reporter | per group | Read-only, live courses only. View reports — best scores, activity, submissions — for available problems in active groups. Cannot edit; loses access once a course is archived. |
| Editor | per group | Their group's curator: sees, edits, and reports on every problem in the group — including draft (unavailable) problems and archived (disabled) courses — plus manages membership. A strict superset of Reporter. |
| Admin | global | Everything, in every group, plus user management. The only role that bypasses the switches below everywhere — an editor bypasses them only within their own groups. |
Admin is deliberately powerful — it's the user-management tier. Prefer a per-group Editor or Reporter for course staff who shouldn't manage accounts.
Even with the right role, three on/off switches decide whether content is actually visible. Understanding these explains almost every "I see nothing" question.
The master switch for a single problem.
- OFF ⇒ hidden from students and reporters. The group's editors still see it (so they can work on a draft or a taken-down problem — and can even test-submit it from the web UI), and admins see it everywhere.
- Use it to take a problem out of circulation.
Whether a course/group is active.
- OFF (disabled / archived) ⇒ the course disappears for its members and reporters. Its editors keep full access — an archived course is still theirs to view, edit, and report on; it just drops out of everyone else's view. Admins see it everywhere.
- Use it to archive a finished course.
A softer, student-only hide for one problem within one group.
- OFF ⇒ students in that group can't see or submit the problem, but reporters and editors still can (for a reporter, provided the problem is Available and the group is Enabled; an editor always can).
- Use it to hide a problem from students while staff keep visibility.
When a problem is Available = OFF:
| Function | Member | Reporter | Editor | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| View statement / download PDF | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| View reports (scores) | — | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| View others' submissions | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Edit the problem | — | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Submit the problem | ✗ | ✗ | ✓* | ✓ |
→ Hidden from students and reporters; the group's editors (and admins) still see and manage it. Students and reporters cannot submit an unavailable problem — it's out of circulation for them; the group's editors can still test-submit it*.
When a group is Enabled = OFF (archived):
| Function | Member | Reporter | Editor | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anything in that group | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
→ An archived course stays fully accessible to its editors (and admins); members and reporters lose access. In the report filters it's shown to editors tagged "archived"; reporters don't see it at all.
When a problem's in-group switch is Enabled = OFF:
| Function | Member | Reporter | Editor | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| See the problem | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Submit the problem | ✗ | ✗ | ✓* | ✓ |
| View reports / submissions / edit | — | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
→ Hides the problem from students only; staff keep access (and the group's editors can still test-submit it*).
* Editor test-submit: an editor can submit to a draft or hidden problem in their own groups — useful for testing before release. This applies everywhere a submission can be started: the web UI, the JSON API, and starting a viva.
Everything above assumes group mode is on (system.use_problem_group) —
the normal setup for running courses. With group mode off, groups,
per-group roles, and both Enabled switches are ignored entirely: every
enabled user — even one in no group — sees and can submit every Available
problem, and unavailable problems are admin-only. (Contest mode replaces these
rules wholesale for the entire site; it will be documented separately.)
- Let a TA view an active course's reports → add them to the group as a Reporter.
- Let a TA manage a course's problems, or see a finished/archived course → add them as an Editor. Editors keep access after a course is archived; reporters do not.
- Hide a problem from students but keep staff access → set the problem's in-group switch OFF (leave the problem Available and the group Enabled).
- Take a problem out of circulation → set the problem Available OFF (editors can still open it to fix or re-release it).
- Archive a finished course → set the group Enabled OFF (its editors keep access; it's tagged archived in the report filters).
A reporter only sees live content: available problems in an enabled group. So a reporter's report comes back empty when the problems have been set unavailable (even if the group is still enabled) — the report page shows a short notice explaining this rather than a silent blank. And once a course is archived (group disabled), it drops out of a reporter's filters entirely.
If a staff member needs to pull a finished course's reports, make them an editor of that group — the reporter role is scoped to live courses by design.
To retire a course, disable its group. It vanishes for students and reporters, but its editors keep full read / edit / report access — an archived course is still theirs to look back on. In the report filters an editor's archived groups appear with an "archived" tag, so active and finished courses are easy to tell apart. Only admins bypass everything everywhere; for a non-admin who needs finished-course access, Editor is the tier to grant.