Administrators have full permissions to edit, remove, and reorganize all content in their Collaboratory. In order to take action on the various content types, administrators must navigate to the Administrative Content section that is visible in their left-hand navigation pane.
HEADS UP! If you are a Collaboratory administrator and do not have access to the Content section within your navigation, contact [email protected] to update your access.
The tabs at the top of the Administrative Content section allow administrators to navigate between the different content types to take action. The content that can be edited includes:
Activities
Courses and Sections
Units
Members
Programs/Initiatives
Community Organizations
Other Institutions
Manage Activities
To manage your institution's activities, select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel. Activities are the default view within the Administrative Content section. When viewing activities, administrators are able to see a full list of all activities (published and/or in a draft state) in their Collaboratory.
Leverage the keyword search to find specific information or click on the column headers within the activity table to sort the content alphabetically, or by date to more easily identify certain activities.
Click into a single activity to expand its subrow and view more information about it and take action:
Activity Designation: Identifies the activity to be either community engaged or public service. For additional information about activity designation, please refer to How do Community Engagement and Public Service Differ?
Feature: Choose to highlight activities on your Collaboratory homepage
Vault: Send the activity to the vault, removing it from public view
Edit: Pops out to the Activity Form to edit the activity
Clone: Duplicate the activity
View: Pops out to the activity's public page
Workflow Status: Identifies the current state of the activity (see table, below):
Activity Status | Description |
Draft | A proxy has begun the activity, but has not yet identified an activity lead. |
Queued Lead | A proxy has identified an activity lead, but has not yet submitted it to the activity lead to claim. |
Pending Claim | A proxy has identified and submitted the activity to the activity lead for review. The activity lead has not yet claimed the activity. |
Awaiting Portal | The activity lead has claimed the activity. Either a proxy or the activity lead may submit the activity for publication. |
Pending Publication | Activity has been submitted for publication. It is awaiting moderation by a moderator or administrator. |
Published | Publicly visible on your Collaboratory. |
Feature Activities on the Homepage
It is suggested campuses to highlight select activities on their Collaboratory homepage to encourage visitors to quickly and easily explore the ways your campus is engaging with community. Often, campuses might selectively highlight activities that are specific to certain institutional goals, themes, or times of the year.
To feature activities on the Collaboratory homepage:
Select "Content" on the left-hand side of the navigation pane.
Select "Activities" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table.
Find the activity you wish to feature (either via keyword search or updating the table headers) and click on it to expand the sub-row.
Select "Feature".
A success message will be displayed, notifying that the activity is now featured on the homepage.
Change an Activity's Designation
When an activity is created, the member is asked a series of questions that identifies the activity, based on the information shared, as either public service or community engagement. These designations help to organize data for institutional reports and build an understanding of the kind of work underway.
In the event that an activity is created with the incorrect type, administrators are able to switch an activity's designation:
Navigate to the Administrative Content, by selecting "Content" on the left-hand side of the navigation pane.
Select "Activities" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table.
Find the activity you wish to edit (either via keyword search or updating the table headers) and click on it to expand the sub-row.
Under the activity's title, within the sub-row, select the arrow next to the word community engagement or public service. Selecting the appropriate term will switch the activity's designation.
NOTE: If you are a faculty or staff member and believe that your activity was incorrectly designated as either community engagement or public service, please contact your institution's Collaboratory administrator.
Manage Courses and Sections
Administrators are able to manage the courses and sections in their institution's Collaboratory from Administrative Content. Courses and their component sections can be entered into Collaboratory in the following ways:
Bulk imported, from registrar course data (suggested)
Created by members when contributing activities
Manually created by administrators
To manage your institution's courses, select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel. Select "Courses & Sections" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table to view a full list of the courses in your Collaboratory.
Leverage the keyword search to find specific courses or click on the column headers within the table to sort the content alphabetically, or numerically to more easily identify certain courses.
HEADS UP! Only courses are listed in the Administrative Content table. Sections are nested within the subrows of each course.
Click into a single course to expand its subrow and view more information about it and take action:
Delete: Permanently deletes the course from your Collaboratory
Courses and sections can only be deleted if they are not affiliated with any active, published activities. If you delete a course, this will also delete any associated sections.
Edit: Pops out an edit window to edit the course's basic information
Only administrators are able to edit courses once they are created.
View: Pops out to the course's public page
To edit sections of a course, open the subrow of the selected course and click the green edit icon under the specific section.
Manually Create Courses and Sections
Though it is strongly encouraged for campuses to bulk import their courses directly from their registrar, administrators have the ability to manually enter courses in Collaboratory. Administrators can add new courses and sections at any time, which will be made available to faculty and staff during activity creation.
REMEMBER! Creating units is a necessary precedent to pre-populating or uploading any course or section data, as the course code (e.g., BIO, HIST) must be nested within an identified campus unit.
An administrator may need to pre-populate select, foundational, community-based courses/sections to ease data entry for faculty and staff. To manually enter a new course and/or section, select the green "New" button in the top right corner of the Courses/Sections Administrative Content table.
Course Codes
Course codes represent the prefix or abbreviation that your institution typically uses in the Course Bulletin (for example, courses in the Biology department might have the course code BIO, whereas courses in the Language department might have SP, FR, GER, and/or CH).
Courses are nested within institutional units and are connected to the unit via the course code. In order to bulk import or manually create courses/sections, the course code must be assigned to a specific unit in your Collaboratory.
REMEMBER! A unit may house multiple course codes. However, a course code may only be connected to one unit.
Manually Assign Course Codes to Units
Select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel
Select "Units" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table.
Select the green "New" button in the top right corner to create a new unit with a course code, or click on the title of an existing unit and select "Edit" to add a course code to a previously created unit. You may find an existing unit using the table search or filter options.
Within the unit's editing screen, select the gray "Add" button under the Unit Course Codes section to attach a new course code to the unit.
After adding all needed course codes, make sure to hit the "Submit" button at the bottom of the edit unit screen.
Manage Units
Administrators identify and populate units so they are available to members during activity creation. Units can only be entered by administrators, and cannot be added or edited by members or moderators. Units are a critical organizing framework for your Collaboratory reports. It is important to take the time to enter them comprehensively and correctly.
HEADS UP! If your campus is currently onboarding to Collaboratory, it is strongly encouraged administrators bulk import their institutional units.
Units reflect the organizational structures that comprise your institution:
Divisions
Colleges/Schools
Academic departments/programs
Offices
Centers/institutes
Clinics
Museums
Networks/coalitions
Co-curricular
To manage your institution's units, select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel. Select "Units" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table to view a full list of the units in your Collaboratory.
Leverage the keyword search to find specific units or click on the column headers within the table to sort the content alphabetically to more easily identify certain units.
Click into a single unit to expand its subrow and view more information about it and take action:
Delete: Permanently deletes the unit from your Collaboratory
Units can only be deleted if they are not affiliated with any active, published activities.
Vault: Send the unit to the vault, removing it from public view
Edit: Pops out an edit window to edit the unit's basic information
Only administrators are able to edit units.
View: Pops out to the unit's public page
Manually Create or Edit Units
Though it is strongly encouraged for campuses to bulk import their units during Collaboratory onboarding, administrators have the ability to manually edit existing and enter new units in Collaboratory. An administrator may need to edit existing units or create new units as campus organizational structures change.
Administrators can add new units at any time, which will be made available to faculty and staff during activity creation.
REMEMBER! Creating units is a necessary precedent to pre-populating or uploading any course or section data.
To manually enter a new course and/or section, select the green "New" button in the top right corner of the Units Administrative Content table.
Unit FAQs
Units may be nested to reflect hierarchical relationships (for example, 9 departments, 3 offices, and 1 center report to a college/school; or 1 center reports to a department).
Once a unit is created, it may then have other campus units report to it.
All units (including colleges/schools, which are likely created as divisions) will have a public landing page created for them.
A unit's landing page will only appear publicly once that unit has been affiliated with an active, published activity. Blank unit pages are not displayed publicly.
The activities that appear on a unit landing page will reflect where a member has identified that unit specifically as a unit collaborator on step 2 of the Activity Entry form.
Manage Members
Administrators are able to manage the members in their institution's Collaboratory from the Administrative Content table. Members will appear in the member list when a member either:
Is bulk imported
Logs into Collaboratory for the first time
REMEMBER: Administrators can import faculty and staff so that a profile is created for them even before they log in. Importing faculty and staff allows proxies to assign them as activity leads and partners right away.
To manage your institution's members, select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel. Select "Members" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table to view a full list of the members in your Collaboratory.
Leverage the keyword search to find specific members or click on the column headers within the table to sort the content alphabetically.
Click into an individual. member to expand the subrow and view more information about the member and take action:
Remove: Removes the member from your Collaboratory
Edit: Pops out an edit window to edit the member's basic information
Only the member themselves, or administrators are able to edit a member profile.
View: Pops out to the member's public page
Partnered Activities and Instructor: If the member is an activity lead or partner on any activities, or the instructor for a course/section, they are listed within the member's subrow.
Member Relationship: Identifies if the member is a faculty, staff, and/or student of the institution.
If your users log into Collaboratory through your campus server (SSO), their relationship(s) is identified via that authentication process and cannot be manually changed by an administrator in Collaboratory.
Member Role: Identifies an individual's role in Collaboratory as either member, moderator, or administrator. One's role in Collaboratory determines what administrator permissions (or lack thereof) are available to them.
Grant Administrator or Moderator Permissions (Update Member Role)
Administrators are able to provide additional moderator or administrator permissions to any member in their Collaboratory. Administrators may enhance a member's role to moderator or administrator, so they may have additional permissions in Collaboratory. Moderator and administrator roles are defined in more detail here.
To grant a member administrator or moderator permissions:
Select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel.
Select "Members" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table to view a full list of the members in your Collaboratory.
Find the member you wish to edit (either via keyword search or updating the table headers) and click on it to expand the sub-row.
Select the down arrow next to the member's role in the right-hand column of the table and click the desired role.
Manage Programs/Initiatives
Administrators identify and populate your institution's unique programs/initiatives to capture engaged work that is happening as part of a distinct initiative of your campus. Administrators are encouraged to identify and enter key programs/initiatives during onboarding to help ensure consistency in data collection. Administrators are able to edit, remove, and add new programs/initiatives at any time within Administrative Content, as institutional priorities shift and evolve.
Programs and initiative tags are made available to members to connect their activities to in Step 2 of the Activity Form.
Edit or Add a New Program/Initiative
Select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel.
Select "Programs/Initiatives" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table.
To create a new Program/Initiative, select the green "New" button in the top right corner of the table.
To take action on an existing Program/Initiative, find the one you wish to edit (either via keyword search or updating the Name column) and click on it to expand the sub-row.
Delete: Permanently deletes the program/initiative from your Collaboratory
Vault: Send the program/initiative to the vault, removing it from public view
Edit: Pops out an edit screen to rename the program/initiative or adjust its description.
Manage Community Organizations
Administrators are able to manage the community organizations in their institution's Collaboratory from Administrative Content. Community organizations can be entered into Collaboratory in the following ways:
Bulk imported
Created by members when contributing activities
Manually created by administrators
HEADS UP! If you have multiple community organizations you wish to enter into Collaboratory, consider bulk importing them.
To manage your institution's community organizations, select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel. Select "Community Organizations" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table to view a full list of the organizations in your Collaboratory.
Leverage the keyword search to find specific organizations or click on the column headers within the table to sort the content alphabetically to more easily identify certain organizations.
Click into a single community organization to expand its subrow and view more information about it and take action:
Delete: Permanently deletes the organization from your Collaboratory
Community organizations can only be deleted if they are not affiliated with any active, published activities.
Vault: Send the organization to the vault, removing it from public view
Edit: Pops out an edit window to edit the organization's basic information
Only administrators are able to edit community organizations once they are created.
Partnered Activities: If the organization is connected to any activities, the activities are listed within the organization's subrow.
View: Pops out to the organization's public page
Manually Add Community Organizations
Administrators can add new community organizations at any time, which will be made available to faculty and staff during activity creation.
To manually enter a new community organization, select the green "New" button in the top right corner of the Community Organizations Administrative Content table.
TIP: When adding new organizations, it is often a good time to let them know about Collaboratory. Community organizations will begin receiving emails when faculty and staff affiliate them with activities.
You may wish to more formally announce Collaboratory to those partners with whom you work most closely or most frequently, contextualizing the announcement within your institution's strategy for Collaboratory.
Manage Other Institutions
Other Institutions are partners include other higher education institutions that collaborate on activities. Collaboratory collects institutional partners separately from community partners or participants.
Administrators are able to manage the other institutions in their campus' Collaboratory from Administrative Content. Other institutions can be entered into Collaboratory in the following ways:
Bulk imported (within the community organization import, designated as "Education: Higher"
Created by members when contributing activities
Manually created by administrators
HEADS UP! If you have multiple institutional partners you wish to enter into Collaboratory, consider bulk importing them.
To manage your campus' institutional partners, select "Content" on the left-side navigation panel. Select "Other Institutions" in the tab at the top of the Administrative Content table to view a full list of the other institutions in your Collaboratory.
Leverage the keyword search to find specific institutions or click on the column headers within the table to sort the content alphabetically to more easily identify other institutional partners.
Click into a single institutional partner to expand its subrow and view more information about it and take action:
Delete: Permanently deletes the institutional partner from your Collaboratory
Other institutions can only be deleted if they are not affiliated with any active, published activities.
Vault: Send the institutional partner to the vault, removing it from public view
Edit: Pops out an edit window to edit the other institution's basic information
Only administrators are able to edit institutional partners once they are created.
View: Pops out to the other institution's public page
Manually Add Institutional Partners
Administrators can add new institutional partners at any time, which will be made available to faculty and staff during activity creation.
To manually enter a new institutional partner, select the green "New" button in the top right corner of the Other Institutions Administrative Content table.
