Example Use
- Choose what you want to do from the first dropdown box – for example Assign branch membership secretary. This will fill in Membership and Manage in the next two dropdowns.
- In the last dropdown, choose the branch. You will see any existing membership secretaries.
- If you want to remove a current memsec, click Remove.
- To add a new memsec, start typing their surname in the Surname input field. Select the new memsec from the list.
- If the new memsec already has a WordPress login, an Add button will appear. Click Add. The new memsec is added to the list of current memsecs.
- If that person is not already a WordPress user, you will get a notification and a button to create one. Click Create. The Add button will now appear and you can add the new memsec.
- Please note: before assigning a new memsec, do ensure that they have read the important note, at the beginning of the Branch User Manual, about data protection.
The following sections give more details and other things you can do.
Actions in detail
The action dropdown contains all the actions that are available to you, depending on your own capailities. They fall into three groups
- Manage a particular capabliity:
- Assign branch membership secretary
- Assign branch librarian
- Assign event organiser
- Assign other capabilities
- Manage a member’s capabilities
- Connect/disconnect user.
Assign a Capability
All four actions in this group work the same way. The first three are simply a shorthand, based on previous roles, for a particular choice of capability. The general case is Assign other capabilities.
To manage a capability, first choose the system to which the capability applies – for example the membership system. Then choose the particular capability that you want to assign – for example manage. There are two possibilities:
- The manage capability can apply to a particular instance, such as a branch, or a particular event. It can also apply to every instance, shown as (all) in the dropdown menu. In that case, you need to choose the instance that you want it to apply to. The current holders of the capability are then shown, and the surname field is enabled so you can select a new holder.
- Some capabilities – for example the membership capability giftAid, automatically apply to (all). In that case, the surname field is enabled straight away.
The surname field works like any other in the membership system. It shows the people who are eligible to have this capability: that is, active SRP members who do not already have the capability. The list is in alphabetical order of surname, except that, if the capability is for a branch, members of that branch are shown first.
When you choose a new person, you can add them straight away if they already have a WordPress login. If not you need to create a WordPress user.
Create a WordPress User
If the person you have selected for a capability does not have a WordPress login, this form appears. It contains an email field and a Create button. The email field is filled in automatically (but can be changed) provided that the user has an email address in the database and there is no other WordPress user with that email. Otherwise the field is left blank, and you must supply an email address. This is the email address that the member will use to set their password, and can subsequently be used for logging in. When you click Create, the WordPress user is created with a login name consisting of their first and last names, if necessary disambiguated by adding a digit at the end (for example TomJones2). If the email is missing or duplicates one already in WordPress, you will get an error message instead.
Manage a Member’s Capabilities
Start by choosing the member from the surname field, which shows all active members in order of surname. As before, you may have to create a WordPress user before going further. If the user already has capabilities, they are shown in a table below the name fields, and you can remove any unwanted ones by clicking Remove. To add a new capability, select the system, capability and instance, at which point the Add button will appear (unless they already have that capability).
Connect or Disconnect User
In some circumstances there might be an existing WordPress user that should be linked to an SRP member, or has been linked to the wrong member. (Specifically this was needed when setting up the system, can be used if you make a mistake creating a WordPress user, and may be needed in future if people are allowed to self-register as WordPress users.)
Start by choosing either a WordPress user in the top line, or an SRP member in the bottom line.
If they are already linked, the corresponding SRP member or WordPress user is shown, and you can break the link by clicking Disconnect. This does not delete the user, simply removes the link and removes the SRP role from the user.
If they are not linked, then choose the SRP member or WordPress user you want to link them to. The surname field will contain only those members or users not already linked. Click Connect to establish the link.
How Capabilities Work
Each system has its own set of capabilities. All systems have the capabilities called admin and manage, and may also have others – the membership system has giftAid, payments and news. Within a system, capabilities form a hierarchy: admin always implies every other capability, and manage usually (but doesn’t have to) implies the remaining capabilities. If you have manage capability for (all) then you can assign manage capability to other instances, but not to (all); if you have admin capability for a system you can assign any capability, including admin, to any instance. WordPress administrators automatically have admin capability for every system. Apart from that, capabilities are completely independent from WordPress.
Capabilities can only be assigned to active members. If a member becomes inactive, they are removed.When a member is marked X capabilities are removed and the corresponding WordPress user is deleted. Any pages authored by the person are assigned to the person carrying out the deletion.
Although it isn’t possible to assign the same capability twice to a member, it is possible to assign a capability that is implied by one they already have. For example a member could be both a branch memsec and an SRP memsec: that way they would retain the branch memsec even if they ceased to be an SRP memsec.