Administrator Guide

Manage Sharing

Expo users have can invite a person to share and collaborate on their Expo sites by sending the person an email invitation. This feature also allows users to share their Expo sites with users who do not have logins to the system. Administrators can disable sharing with people outside the system, and they can prevent Expo users from allowing outside people to add content to their Expo sites.

1. Click the System Admin tab.
2. Click the Manage Expo LX link.
3. Click the Manage Sharing link.

Sharing with External Users

By default, Expo LX users will not be able to share their Expo sites with external users.

1. Select whether Expo LX users can share their Expo sites with users outside of the system.
2. Define the permissions.
   

 

There are three options for sharing with external users:

 

No permissions can be granted:
When this is selected, users will not be able to share their Expo sites with users who do not have a system login. In this case, if a user sends an email invitation to someone, the recipient of the invitation will be prompted to login to the system in order to access the site. If the user does not have a system account, they will not be able to access the Expo site. If you have a closed system and do not want to allow any part of the system to be shared with guest users, then you should select this option.

Read permissions (View):
When this is selected, users will only be able to give read permissions to users outside of the system. In this case, if a user selects to invite an external user on the Invite Person sharing form, the user will only be able to select the "View" permission. Edit, Comment, and Export permissions can still be sent via an email invitation to users with system logins. If you allow guest users to access some content in your system but you want to prevent anyone without a system login from adding any content, then you should select this option.

Read and write permission (View, Edit, Comment, Export):
When this is selected, Expo users can share their sites with anyone whether or not they have a system login. Furthermore, users can assign all available permissions to any user.

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Configuration Options for Sharing Invitations

1. Select whether users should be able to send invitations to their sites.
2. Specify the default subject and message for the sharing invitation email.

 

 

When a user sends an invitation to their Expo site, they are prompted to select whether the invitation is being sent to an external user or to a registered user at the institution. The visibility of these two options on the Invite Person form is controlled by the following two options:

1. Allow users to send sharing invitations to external users
2. Allow users to send sharing invitations to registered users at this institution

You cannot enable sharing invitations to external users if you have specified that no permissions can be assigned to external users in the Sharing with External Users settings at the top of the Manage Sharing form. If you do not allow Expo users to send invitations to external users, all recipients of invitations to any Expo site will be required to login to the system in order to access the site.

When users share their Expo sites with external users, they can email an invitation to the external users to provide them with access to their site. Administrators can set the default subject and message for the sharing invitation email. Expo LX users will be able to modify the subject or message or use the default.

Note: When creating a sharing invitation, the link for the sharing pass will appear on the form on which the user creates the invitation. The Expo LX user can copy and paste this link into the email. However, the administrator can set the link for the site to appear in the invitation by default by typing "%URL%" in the default sharing invitation Body field, as done in the example below.

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Sharing Permissions

Expo users have can invite a person to share and collaborate on their Expo sites by sending the person an email invitation. This feature also allows users to share their Expo sites with users who do not have logins to the system. Administrators can disable sharing with people outside the system, and they can prevent Expo users from allowing outside people to add content to their Expo sites.

 

 

Administrators can prevent Expo users from sharing their sites with outside users and from giving Edit, Comment, or Export privileges to outside users.

Sharing with External People

Selecting the first checkbox in the Sharing Permissions group box -- "Allow users to share with people outside the system for viewing" -- allows Expo LX users to give non-system users access to their Expo sites without requiring authentication. If this option is not selected, Expo LX users can send an email invitation to anyone, but invitation recipients will be required to login to Blackboard in order to access the site.

Allowing Additional Privileges to External People

If the first checkbox has been selected, you can allow further permissions to external people with whom Expo sites have been shared. If the second checkbox is selected, Expo LX users can give external people Edit, Comment, and/or Export permissions when they email an invitation.

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Configuration Options for Sharing with Groups

Select which sharing options should be available for Expo users, outside of the Invite Person option.

Select whether Expo users can share their Expo sites with the following types of groups:

1. Everyone in the world
2. Registered users at the institution
3. Courses (and organizations if you have the Blackboard Community System)

 

If a user shares their site with Everyone in the World, permissions to the site can be given to anyone regardless of whether they have a system login or not. This will not give people outside the system access to other parts of your course management system. However, this will make the shared Expo site accessible by anyone in the outside world, and Google and other search engines will be able to index the shared site.

If a user shares their site with Registered Users at the Institution, any user with a login to your system will be able to access the site. This means that the site owner can share the permalink for the site with anyone who has a system login, and other system users who find the user's Expo homepage will be able to see the shared site on the homepage.

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Configuration Options for Sharing with Roles

1. Select the Institution Roles and System Roles with whom Expo LX users can share their Expo sites.
2. Select the OK button to submit the form and save the configurations.

In addition to the above-mentioned sharing options, Expo LX users can also share their Expo sites with users who have specific Institution Roles or System Roles. In some cases, this can be useful. For example, a student may want to share an academic portfolio wiki with all users with an "Advisor" role. In other cases, this can be confusing to students and faculty. For example, any end user would have a hard time understanding the "Card Office Administrator" role.

 

For this reason, administrators can enable or disable the display of any Institution Role or System role on the sharing screen. Only the roles that are selected by the administrator will appear to end users when sharing with a role. Best practice is to only display roles that are likely to be understood by end users, e.g., "Staff", "Student", "Faculty", or "Alumni."