How does MediaLab handle user access to folders?

MediaLab offers an extensive permission system to allow fine-grained control on who gets access to what. As described on the What are the available user levels page, there are four user levels available.

Owners, administrators and media managers

All these roles give the user unrestricted access to all content, as well as to all management features. It is not possible to restrict their access to a subset of folders, or a subset of features (e.g. it is not possible to disable sharing for an administrator). For this reason, you should be careful before granting someone the administrator role, as he/she will be able to not only manage other users, but also delete media from your lab.

Uploaders and regular users

By default, both these roles provide no access to any media. When you add a new uploader or regular user, he/she will not be able to see any of the existing media in your lab. In addition, the account is not able to access features such as share and editing/removing media without explicit access. The permission system has 2 parts: access to media and access to specific features.

Access to media

The access to media for uploaders and regular users is controlled using permission groups. You can find these on your "Settings" page under "Permissions" > "Groups". It works as follows:

  • Create a new user group, e.g. "External press".
  • Add users to this group.
  • Select folders that the group will have access to.
  • You can specify access to the folders at root level, but also for any subfolders.
  • For example, you can have a top level folder called "Press", with subfolders for each individual press agency.
  • It is not possible to grant access to a subfolder without access to the parent folder.

A user can be member of multiple groups, and the user will have access to all folders that any of his/her groups has access to. Please note it is not necessary to add administrators and owners to a user group, as they have access to all media by definition.

Access to specific features

Once you have added the uploader or user to a group, you can also grant them access to specific features of MediaLab. By default, regular users and uploaders are only able to view your media, and uploaders can add new content. You can grant them access to other features using so-called user flags, which we describe in more detail here.