Migration and editing permissions -- effect project plan

Question

Editing permissions are copied from Paratext 7 to Paratext 8 during migration. This can potentially cause problems if a project plan is used to manage permissions after migration. The editing permissions that are set in Users, Roles and Permissions override the attempts of the project plan to give and take away permissions as work on the translation project progresses. The potential exists for more than one person having editing permission for the same verse. It is recommended that the permissions in Users Roles and Permissions be set to none when a project plan is used. At the very least, administrators should be aware of how project plans and Users, Roles and Permissions can interact and use the appropriate caution.

Answer 1

It is somewhat different for a Back Translation project linked to a project. In the Project Plan you cannot give permission to edit the BT and you don’t want to give permission to edit the translation itself, because the person doing the BT is different from the translator for that book. In the Assignment of tasks, you can assign the preparing of a BT for a book to a certain person but that does not give this person editing rights to that book. This has to be done through the main User Roles and Permissions for the BT project. Whether this is by design I do not know.

Comments

Iver+Larsen:

Whether this is by design I do not know.

It is sorta by-design. We originally were going to have BT tasks give editing access to the BT project books. However, this turned out to be technically expensive (mostly because of cross-project permission issues) and so it was pushed to a later version of Paratext (it will hopefully be done for 8.1).

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Thanks. I just discovered another cross project permission problem. When I give a person editing rights in a BT project, he automatically receives permission in the main translation project even when such permission is not given through Roles and Permission. He should not have that permission.

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Iver+Larsen:

When I give a person editing rights in a BT project

Do you mean that when you use Users, Roles, and Permissions to change the permissions for a user, these permissions seem to be copied to the base project as well?

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Yes, the permissions are copied from the BT to the translation project, but that person does not have permission in the translation project for the same book.

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But there may be some interference from the Assignments that I am still checking out. At the moment all tasks in the Project plan are set to not require editing while I test it further.

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I’m not completely understanding the problem you are describing (maybe screenshots would help?).

Could it be confusion caused by the fact that the Assignments and Progress for the Back Translation project actually uses the Assignments and Progress of the base project (i.e. BT projects do not normally have their own project plan - they use the plan of their base project)?

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I have only made a project plan for the main project. If I open it from the BT it is identical.

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How do I insert a screen shot here? By the Upload?

2017-06-28 (1).png1366×768 204 KB

Charicha ABC should not have permission in MAT for KPZ. Only for the BT

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There are two tasks in my back translation stage. One is Back translation verse check, the other is back translation status complete. The person who is assigned any of these tasks immediately gets access to the main translation and bypasses the permissions set in the main translation.

2017-06-28 (2).png1366×768 187 KB

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Okay, I see. The bug is that assigning a back translation check to a user gives them edit permissions for the main project. I’ll write it up.

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It seems to me that if the following setting is used in the Project Plan, a person is not given editing privileges for the base project when he is assigned a task for the Back Translation.

image.png860×453 23.1 KB

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Thanks, I had already done that for every task. The problem is not from the Project Plan, but from the assignment of the check Back Translation Status Complete.
I can manage it by keeping that particular check unassigned.

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Based on this screen capture, then Iver+Larsen has found a bug.

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He did find a bug and I’ve written it up (see my previous post).

Answer 2

If you would like to manage the permissions manually and still have a project plan, you can make the Requires Editing field for all tasks be No. This will keep the project plan from changing the book permissions.

Comments

Yes, this is possible, but would take away one of the advantages of using a project plan. I know of at least one team where the team leader gives every team member permission for everything. The combinations are many. I want to encourage what is the use case we expect most teams to follow.