Setting up SG for large senior project cohort w/multiple project types

Hello, short time lurker, first time poster here,

I am setting up a SG server, previously only lightly used, to support a 130+ cohort of seniors working on 10+ projects. My initial use case is limited in scope (asset review and timesheets) but we hope to use SG for more going forward.

I coordinate senior project for my university’s digital media department. Projects span from animation & vfx, game development, VR/XR projects, and web/mobile/experimental projects.

My current questions involve default template use and permissions for a shared server and my particular goals.

1. Is the plainly labeled “template project” the most generic/flexible for non-film/game projects? We have web, mobile, and museum exhibition projects. I do not know enough yet of the tool or the project needs to develop my own template yet.

2. Is there a way (or place) I can view the default permissions item by item, like a spreadsheet, for Manager and Artist? The permission tree as offered for editing is so deep and complex it’s difficult to compare differences and see how best to accomplish my goals below. (I’ve been told no by SG - any creative ideas?)

2a. I want to enable student team leaders to act like managers, but only for their own project. My starting point for now is to add permissions to the Artist role, not remove some from the Manager role.
2b. I want to let all students see and comment (only) on the work posted in projects they are not assigned to.

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Just want to reinforce item #2 – the permissions view is a glaring pain-point for us.

Even adding a simple CSV export for it would help in the short term.

I’ll make a roadmap feature request for that (anticipating @johnny.duguid.)

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Hey, I think I’m starting out in a similar place as you…kind of digging my way through self-training, and trying to set up something usable for university group projects. It’s tricky with the depth and flexibility of SG, though.

Creating your own template isn’t too hard. I started with one of SG’s templates to make a prototype project and just stripped it down to what I needed and saved that as a template.

Your types of projects sound pretty varied, but maybe you could create various Task Templates that match the types of projects you have and their related tasks/components. That would let you have one basic project template but you could populate it with sub-templates that match what type of project. Not sure if that’s a good fit, though. It would still let you choose a template that might not correspond with the right project.

Hmmm, is there a way to restrict Task Templates to certain Project Templates? Anyone?

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+1 for easier permissions viewing and configuration. I appreciate the depth and control available, but it’s way too much to dig through.

FWIW, I think you could use the Artist-Admin level for your project leads and Artist for the rest of the team. But you still might need to tweak the configs for both.

ps. Hi Doug!

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I don’t see that role in the mostly default server we have, but it sounds like my intent.

I could use the default Manager role but then I have way too many students running around with the potential to make mistakes in other people’s projects.

Suggestions on the key permissions to enable in the Artist role to allow Manager-like power only in the project the Artist-Manager" is attached to?

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Thanks. My challenge is I don’t know what they need yet, so I’ll leave them in the default generic template and learn/adjust from there.

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Oh, I guess maybe someone created that Artist-Admin group before me here at MoPA, or at least you are correct that it’s not a default:

Maybe it was made via enabling the " Use Admin Options" option:

I’d sure love to compare them easily to find out the differences! :rofl:

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I hear you on that…this year will be a voyage of discovery a bit for me. The nice thing about the Task Templates I found is that you can pick and choose what specific tasks to add to each template. So you have a fair amount of customization available without getting overly complex. You can also give them names which can be very clear to the uninitiated as well.

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We have a strict “two person door” policy here for Admin.

Before modifying any DB schemas we need to get another Admin to okay it.

You sleep better.

@Chad …+1 for Cote-d’Azur, +1 for SketchFab.

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This seems almost exactly what I’m looking for though may be overkill. I’ll have to experiment.

Has anyone used this option to give more (project-local) power to non-admin roles?

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One more pain-point (it’s Pain Point Tuesday!)…

Changes made to parent (aka ‘super class’?) templates are not easily pushed to sub-templates or Projects.

Changes to facility-wide schemas are a nightmare… consider getting an email like this:

sorry, we made a mistake: the frame range can no longer be a string (eg. “1001-1205”), it has to be changed to two numeric fields.

Note that this has to be rolled out to all templates, all projects and all views.

I could imagine, in some idyllic world – “Doug’s World™” – a tool to push changes like this in one atomic update (and leave out an old Project, perhaps.) You know, one massive migration, a real nail-biter, no-undo-possible, terrorizing… button click.

To be honest, if I was an engineer at Shotgun, and someone asked for this feature, I’d faint. Then laugh.

(again, posting a Roadmap suggestion.)

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Aw, c’mon, where’s your sense of adventure? :wink:

That’s actually a really good practice to do, although none of us are experts here, sadly. These forums will also serve as my ‘sanity check’.

ps @dougm <a special shout-out to ‘distdots’ is warranted methinks>

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You only get the extra distdots bonus if you include:

sfplay disco.wav

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Yeah, I can’t imagine trying to do any master-level updates at the facility with dozens of projects in various stages of progress. It would be nice if they had some sort of ‘lockdown’ feature for projects in progress or otherwise needing protection from potentially damaging updates.

Thankfully here in EDU land, many things can be reset over the summer.

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Nope.

I’ll just have to do this the old fashioned way and change a whole bunch of individual permissions.

Can I get a vote of confidence that adding permissions to the Artist role is better than removing permissions from the Manager role? (Which path involves fewer changes? Is either approach flawed?)

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Hey all, great discussion here, really appreciate all of your insights! Would love to hear more from anyone else having trouble getting permissions dialed in, especially when first getting Shotgun up and running.

A couple of quick thoughts here:

Relating to both of these questions - we tend to recommend starting with the more permissive role (in this case, Manager) and locking things down from there to create a slightly more restrictive role. This is mainly due to the fact that more locked-down roles like Artist and Vendor have custom conditional rules acting on them under-the-hood, that you as an end user don’t have any ability to adjust. So you may hit a brick wall with starting with one of those roles and trying to open things up.

As far as key permissions to enable, to make a role that has Manager powers but is restricted as to what Projects they can access, you can just turn on the “See Assigned Projects Only” rule for a duplicate of the Manager role. This will make it so they can’t see or access any Projects that aren’t listed explicitly in the “Projects” field for their Person record.

People

I hope this helps!

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Hey Tommy,

That is what we are going to do to (access to assigned projects only).

But it is a bit of a shame if you want to allow others to at least view what is happening with the other projects, just not change anything. It would be great to have a ‘View Only’ type of option.

Thanks also for the insights with permissions and how best to approach tweaking them, very good to know!

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For anyone who wants a more streamlined way to edit permissions, there is a nicer view for anyone who has access to editing fields. It’s not quite an easy spreadsheet view, but from any page where you can see a column for the field you want to edit you can go to “Configure Field” and then you can use the “Permissions” tab to change what different permissions groups can both see and edit that field.

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Extra helpfully, for “status” fields, you can even configure specifically what statuses a account can change to or from.

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I will test this later today but it seems you have given me exactly what I was looking for. A simple solution and the reasoning behind it. Thanks!

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Now, how about letting Artists see and comment on projects they are not attached to?

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