Permissions explained

The following table summarises which users have what permissions inside a collab.

A user can have more than one role among admin, editor, or viewer at the same time in a given collab. In such a case, the user has the permissions of the highest role.

Notice that for a public collab, a user logged in who is not a member of that collab has more permissions than a user not logged in (row 2 vs row 4).

For public collabs, users that are not logged in:

• do not have access to the Lab, but they can see a notebook viewer in a wiki page;
• do not have access to the Drive, but they can access files/folders in the storage if a public link is shared in a wiki page (e.g. to data or a notebook file);
• do not have access to the Bucket, but they can access files/folders in the storage if a public link is shared in a wiki page (e.g. to data or a notebook file);

Collabs used to publish results to the widest audience should be public, and the "All users" Unit should be added to the viewers in the Team of those collabs. These settings allow users to read all the content and run Jupyter notebooks, but viewers are prevented from modifying any content of the collab, except their own container used to run the notebooks.

All wiki pages and files in storage are version-controlled. Therefore, users creating collabs are encouraged to adopt a collaborative mode of working, trust collaborators, and use file history to check things when necessary.
 

Permission issues

If you are experiencing problems with permissions to access some part of a collab, the following checklist will help you.

1. If you cannot access the front page of a collab:
   1. Is it a public collab? ask someone who has access to the collab.
   2. If it is not a public collab:
      1. Do you have a Collaboratory 2 account? if not, see https://ebrains.eu/register
      2. Can you log in to that account?
         1. If not, address the error message
         2. If the login button loops you back to the login page, try accessing from another browser, ideally with as few plugins as possible. If this resolves your issue, please notify support@ebrains.eu  indicating browser name and operating system.
         3. If the above does not work, contact support@ebrains.eu
   3. Have you been added to the collab team directly as a user, or indirectly because a Unit or Group you are a member of are in the collab's Team? if not ask an admin of that collab (the support team will not do this)
   4. Have you been added recently to the collab's Team? if so, try logging out from the Collaboratory wiki (upper right hand button in a wiki page) and re-login. Alternately, you can try accessing the collab from a private tab in your web browser.
   5. Try accessing from another browser, ideally with as few plugins as possible. If this resolves your issue, please notify support@ebrains.eu  indicating browser name and operating system.
   6. If the above does not work, contact support@ebrains.eu
2. If you cannot access a specific wiki page of a collab but you can access the front page of that collab, contact support@ebrains.eu
3. If you cannot access an Office type file in the drive:
   1. Check that you have access to the front page of that collab first (point 1 above)
   2. First try accessing the file without using the link to the file
      1. Go to the front page of that collab
      2. Click on the Drive entry in the navigation pane (left hand side)
         1. If there is no Drive entry in the navigation, you are in a public collab and you do not have additional permissions in this collab. If you need to edit the file to update it in that collab, ask to be added as an editor of the file.
      3. Browse the directory structure to the file and open the file
      4. If you do not have permission to access the drive of that collab but you do have access to the wiki of that collab, you have a rare condition of permissions being out of sync between the wiki and drive. It is a temporary issue which you can resolve in one of two ways:
         1. explicitly logout of the drive:
            1. Click on the "Open in Drive" link at the top right of the wiki window.
            2. Click on the profile icon at the top right of that new Drive window or tab
            3. Click on log out and then re login in that window. Close the window and try accessing again in the wiki page.
         2. or you can access the file from a private tab in your browser
      5. Try accessing from another browser, ideally with as few plugins as possible. If this resolves your issue, please notify support@ebrains.eu  indicating browser name and operating system.
      6. If the above does not work, contact support@ebrains.eu
   3. If you are capable of accessing the file by browsing to it but not via a link/URL to it, the link is the issue
      1. See the FAQ on linking to a file
   4. If you can follow the link to the file and view its contents but not edit it
      1. If the URL of the link does not include "/smart-link/", see the FAQ on linking to a file
      2. Click the Team entry in the navigation pane (left hand side) and check that you are in the admin or editor permissions, not in the viewer permissions.