Uncanny Groups: Empowering Group Leaders

Today’s Uncanny LearnDash Groups 3.5 release is a big update that includes a number of new features and improvements.

Restrict content to LearnDash Group Leaders

There are many ways to restrict content with LearnDash (by role, tag, course, group, level and more) in our plugins and those of others, and even in Uncanny LearnDash Groups we have a shortcode to show content to members of a certain LearnDash group only. What was missing was a way to show content to Group Leaders only.

The Uncanny Groups 3.5 release includes support for this new shortcode:

[uo_groupleader_restrict_content user_groups="7542"]
Only Group Leaders can read this.
[/uo_groupleader_restrict_content]

What that does is show the content inside the shortcodes only to Group Leaders that are set up as Group Leaders for the group with ID 7542. The “user_groups” attribute is optional; if it’s omitted, all users with the Group Leader role will see it. It can also support multiple group IDs separated by comma.

Group License purchase emails

A common question we’ve had from customers is how to get new Group Leaders to the Group Management page and to make onboarding easier. Today’s release includes a completely new email type: New Group Purchase.  This email is sent to purchases of Group License products (i.e. Group Leaders) so that you can provide special instructions about how to use and set up their new groups. Typically this email might include instructions about signing in, how to find the Group Management page, how to start adding users to a group, etc.
Group Purchase Email

Group Leaders can edit users

We know this sounds like a huge and scary change so this one is disabled by default. If, however, you want to let Group Leaders edit user names and email address, even usernames, that is now possible. When enabled, Group Leaders can click a student name in the Group Management page and change information about the student.

Turning it on requires toggling the setting(s) below in the Uncanny LearnDash Groups settings page:

Group Leaders can edit learndash student data

Be careful with this setting. For some sites this will make things far more convenient for Group Leaders, but on others this could be an unwanted risk of exploitation and changing student information without the student’s consent.

Administrators can now use all reports

We really want to discourage WordPress administrators from adding multiple roles to their accounts to switch between functions, so to make things easier, admins can now access everything that Group Leaders can in the Uncanny LearnDash Groups front end. Previously we locked some reports down to users with the Group Leader role, now everything is open to both Group Leaders and admins.  Admins will, however, still need to be explicitly assigned to groups as group leader for the groups to show up in the front-end interface.

The 3.5 release of Uncanny LearnDash Groups also includes a dozen other improvements and fixes. If you’re a user, make sure you check out the full changelog at https://www.uncannyowl.com/knowledge-base/uncanny-learndash-groups-changelog/

4 replies
  1. Murray Jenkins
    Murray Jenkins says:

    Group Leaders can edit users
    This is the best thing since sliced bread! .. The work around with permission and profile builder i had to do before to achieve this! BRAVO!

    Just gotta add the password field next. I get a lot of group leaders that have issues with there learners figuring out the password.

    Reply
    • Ryan
      Ryan says:

      We still don’t really want to add that one because it makes it very easy for Group Leaders to access a student’s full account. Group Leaders could set any password they want, then get into the student’s account and see personal information and activity in non-group courses. We get many requests, but for these reasons we’re still wary of adding it (even with a switch that would allow admins to turn it on and off).

      Reply
    • Ryan
      Ryan says:

      There is no notification for changes made by Group Leaders, but note that Group Leaders cannot change passwords. If Group Leaders initiate a password reset, then yes, the student would receive that email.

      Reply

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