User Privacy and Visibility Guideline

1 Description

1.1 Requirements

We need a regulation of user visibility, i.e. an answer to the question: Which user can "see" which other users in:

• User search in Mail
• Add members to groups, courses, exercises and roles
• Who is online
• A potential new user directory feature

• Role
• Group/Course Membership
• User property value (e.g. "institution selection", e-mail)

1.2 Guidelines

The Jour Fixe at 05 Feb 2013 set up some initial rules:

• All user fields that are set in the profile settings to global visible can be shown to all users and anonymous.
• All user fields that are set in the profile settings being "visible for logged in users" can always be shown to all users except anonymous.
• Course admins and tutors, groups admins can see firstname, lastname and account name. ("tutor context")
• The triple firstname, lastname and account name is also currently shown in other places where a set of users is maintained, e.g. exercise participants, forum moderators. ("tutor context")
• Chat and mail can always display the account name for logged in users. ("learner context")
• Anonymous can see account names in public features like forums, wiki, ..., but only firstname and lastname if they are set "globally" visible in the user profile.

2 Status

• Scheduled for Release: Release 4.4
• Funding: Required
• Development: Feature is to be developed by tbd

3 Additional Information

• If you want to know more about this feature, its implementation or funding, please contact: norbert.bromberger at qualitus.de

4 Discussion

Martin Studer (sr.solutions) An additional option for user visibility determination should be the state of a user account. It should be possible to deactivate a user account in the system so that the account will not be displayed at the course/group registration search or the user mail search (http://www.ilias.de/mantis/view.php?id=4438&nbn=4#bugnotes)

I propose the following states for user accounts:
preparing, active, inactive

Visibility at course/group registration search: Preparing, Active
Visibility at user mail search and other communication features: Active

User with state inactive you will see exclusively in the ILIAS Administration.

JF 5 Feb 2013: We schedule this as a guideline for 4.4.

5 Follow-up