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Virtual Projects

Neil Rotstan edited this page Apr 24, 2020 · 4 revisions

Virtual Projects provide a flexible means of loosely organizing disparate Challenges into ad-hoc groupings without having to move the challenges from their original projects. Whereas a challenge can only belong to a single standard project, it can be a member of any number of virtual projects. Anyone can create virtual projects and can add any challenge to their virtual project that is either publicly visible or to which they have at least read access (via permissions on the challenge's standard parent project). The admins of a virtual project can add other members to their virtual project, assigning them Read, Write, or Admin access.

Note: while you can add existing challenges to virtual projects, you cannot create new challenges within a virtual project. Challenges can only be created in standard projects (but can then be added to virtual projects)

You can create a Virtual Project just like you would a regular Project. Just indicate that the Project you are creating is a Virtual Project:

create project screenshot

Once you have your Virtual Project, you will see the (empty) challenge list in the Project management screen:

project manage screenshot

Use the 'Manage Challenge List' button in the Challenge List widget to add / remove Challenges from this Virtual Project.

challenge list manager screenshot

Roles in Virtual Projects

It is worth noting that Read/Write/Admin roles in virtual projects only govern the virtual project itself, and do not confer any administrative ability over the challenges in the virtual project. For example, a user who does not have write access to a challenge will not suddenly gain write access to it by adding that challenge to a virtual project in which they have do have write access. Challenge administrative permissions are solely governed by the challenge's standard parent project.

However, any member of a virtual project will have limited read access to the challenges in that virtual project, even if some of those challenges would not normally be visible to them. For example, they will see the names of those challenges, be able to visit the mapper (not administrative) details page for the challenges, and will be able to see some aggregated data from the challenges such as comments and stats. However, a challenge can only be added to a virtual project by someone who has visibility of the challenge, either because it is public or because they have been explicitly granted read or higher access. Please be aware that by adding a challenge to a virtual project, you are granting all members of that virtual project limited read access to the challenge.

More specifically, the virtual project roles grant the following permissions:

Read: user can view the virtual project; can see the challenges in the virtual project, visit the end-user details pages for those challenges to initiate work on them, and see various aggregated data from the challenges such as comments and stats; can see the usernames and roles of other members of the virtual project.

Write: all permissions of Read; user can add/remove challenges to/from the virtual project; can edit the name and description of the virtual project itself.

Admin: all permissions of Write; user can add/remove users to/from the virtual project and modify their roles.