07 January 2023, 7:49

Hello

This setting is available when you add a new institution. https://manual.mahara.org/en/21.10/administration/institutions.html#edit-the-site-institution 

Is it possible to switch this on for an existing institution?  I haven't been able to find this setting anywhere.  Is there something else I need to switch on first?

Regards, Marion

09 January 2023, 13:40

Hi Marion,

This setting is currently only available in 'proper' institutions, but not in 'No institution'.

Cheers

Kristina

10 January 2023, 7:27

Thanks Kristina

I've created a new institution and I'm trying to add people using a CSV file but I get:

Error on line 2: "user123" is not a member of the institution temp.

(temp being the name I've given the institution (just testing).

Regards, Marion

10 January 2023, 8:55

Hi Marion,

Can you please provide the steps that you took to add the accounts? It sounds like you activated the option to update accounts rather than adding new accounts. It's important to know what the settings are for the options on the 'Add or update accounts by CSV' page.

Thank you

Kristina

10 January 2023, 22:18

Thank you once again, Kristina, that was it.

Is it not possible to bulk add members to a new institution if they are already on our Mahara site?  I am now getting an error message that the emails in the CSV already exist.  We used to have different institutions but not now and I can't remember how I added people - probably manually since large numbers were not in question.

What I would really like to do is enable users to access peer assessment.  The different institutions were had previously used are not currently enabled and we have an internal institution.  I was testing to see if I could create a new institution and add all current active users.

Regards, Marion

13 January 2023, 15:29

Hi Marion,

You can move people from one institution to another via a CSV file in Mahara 22.10, which was funded by an Australian university. You can't use it to keep them in two institutions though.

You can add people in bulk to another institution via Admin menu → Institutions → Members. The display there is limited to 100 people at a time so that may be a bit limited if you want to move large numbers of people that would be displayed on different screens. Happy to look into how to improve that if you are keen on funding that.

Thank you

Kristina

07 March 2026, 2:40

Hi Kristina

Is this still the case - that the 'allow peers to see portfolio content' setting is currently only available in 'proper' institutions, but not in 'No institution'.

We only use the site institution - is there any way turn this feature on (other that creating a new institution and moving everyone)?  Is there a reason its not available?

Thanks

Yvonne

13 March 2026, 8:15

Hi Yvonne,

Yes, that is still the case. I suspect it was an oversight when we implemented the functionality because usually we do also make functionality like that available for 'No institution', i.e. the site level. At the time, the client for whom we implemented this and who allowed us to upstream this feature worked with institutions, and thus, the primary concern was to make the feature available in institutions. I don't see why this couldn't also be used on the site level. Maybe James wants to make the code change for that? 🙂

In general, I recommend to set up an institution, even if everyone is in it on the site and you don't differentiate between departments etc. This makes it possible that you have two additional administrator roles available that restrict how much they can do and not every administrator needs to be a site administrator. So if you wanted your first level support staff only to be able to masquerade as a student to help them with permissions on their portfolio, for example, you could give them the 'Institution support administrator' role as they would then not be able to deactivate plugins or change other vital configuration elements.

Thank you

Kristina