Roles Within a Voicethread Organization

VoiceThread Manager Guide

Higher Ed

Introduction

The VoiceThread Manager allows you to create accounts for students and educators, create Groups to make make sharing and organizing work easier, and manage all the people in your virtual organization. This guide is intended for anyone who is an Administrator of a VoiceThread Higher Ed organization.

Roles within a VoiceThread Organization

1. Administrator

Administrators of the VoiceThread Organization are the only users who can see and manage both students and other faculty members’ account information within the department or university. In addition, these Administrators will be the only users capable of creating accounts or accessing the resources of the organization (user credits, phone-commenting minutes, and export credits). The primary tasks of Administrators will be to:

● Create any new user accounts

● Allocate phone commenting minutes and export credits to users who need them

● Delete or remove users from the school organization

An Administrator can make any other Pro user an Administrator, as well. To do this, click on a Pro user’s name in the Manager. Next to where it says Cannot Manage Organization, click change, then select Allowed to Manage Organization. Click Update to save your changes.

2. Pro (faculty)

Faculty do not have access to the Manager. If they need access, please upgrade them to Administrators.

3. Basic (students)

Students do not have access to the Manager.

Adding Users

Only Organization Administrators can add users. Click the Manage link at the bottom of your MyVoice page, then click the Add Users tab at the top of the page. There are two ways you can add users to your account: one-by-one or in bulk.

To add a single user, enter the person’s information into the fields on the left side of the screen, and then click Add.

To add users in bulk, download the sample CSV file from the right side of the screen. Enter all your students’ information, then upload the CSV file.

Creating Accounts via CSV Upload

Administrators will export from their LMS/SMS a list of students and faculty, and then upload to the VoiceThread Manager a CSV file containing all the students and faculty at the institution. This will create the user accounts in bulk. Any duplicate email addresses entered, or emails with accounts already attached to them, will be handled automatically. Here is a look at how to format the CSV file.

first_name

Enter the first name of the user in this field. It’s critical that this information is accurate and not an abbreviation or any other code. This name will never be seen anywhere except in the Manager, which is only accessible by Pro users within the Organization.

last_name

identity

This is the name that appears next to the user’s Identity photo (the picture that represents him) whenever he makes a comment. This name is visible to anyone who can view the VoiceThread.

email_username

Enter the user’s valid email address.

password

The password must be at least 6 alphanumeric characters with no spaces. If your passwords begin with zeros, e.g., 004567, then Excel will often remove them. To prevent that from happening, select the password fields. From the menu, click Format and select Cells. Change “General” to “Text” for the fields.

type

Enter either “Basic” or “Pro.”

label

You can attach any labels or tags you want to accounts by adding them here. Later, you’ll be able to search by these labels and perform batch operations like removing these users all at once, allocating phone-commenting minutes, or adding them all to a Group. To be most effective, these labels should be as unique as possible. ‘Spanish’ will not be a useful as ‘SP231.’

It’s important that these fields be filled out accurately. Management is usually quite easy when the data is accurate. Take the time to make sure your information is correct, and if you have any questions at all, do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to invest time in this phase of your organization’s start-up as it will set the tone for the rest of the year.

Special Notes:

1. If you add a user who already has a VoiceThread account, he will receive an onscreen pop-up invitation to join your organization the next time he signs in. We do not send an email to notify him. These users with existing VoiceThread accounts will appear in your school list as “Pending” until they sign in and accept an on-screen your invitation to join your school.

Message you’ll see in the Manager:

The onscreen message seen by these “Pending” users:

2. In the world of VoiceThread, all content belongs to the person who created it. If a user creates 8 VoiceThreads and then leaves a VoiceThread School, he will take that content with him. This applies to all account types: Basic, Pro and Administrator. The only time this would not be true is if an Administrator deleted an account, in which case all the content would be deleted permanently.

Settings

To access your Organization’s settings, click the Settings link at the top of your Manager. In the settings window, you can:

● Change your Organization’s name

● Enter the email addresses of the people responsible for support and billing

● By default, all the people in your VoiceThread Organization will see a thumbnail image representing the Organization whenever they are sharing a VoiceThread. This will allow them to share their work with anyone in the Organization and with the whole Organization itself. If you do not want want users to be able to see this thumbnail image and share with others in the Organization, click the checkbox that says Do not list organization on Share slide, and then click Save Settings.

Editing Users’ Information

When you’re working in the Manager, all of your members are listed on the left side of the page. Click on a name from that list to display a user’s information. Click the Change link next to a person’s name, email address, identity, or password to change those details. Click Update to save your changes.

Export Credits and Phone-Commenting Minutes

Your Organization may come with export credits and phone- commenting minutes. If you need more, you can always purchase them from within the Manager.

Export credits and phone-commenting minutes are given to your Organization as a whole, and you must then allot them to students, other faculty, or to yourself in order to use the credits. To allot credits or minutes to people, click on a name in your Manager, and next to where that person’s export credits or phone minutes are displayed, click Add. Type how many credits or minutes you would like to give that person, then click Update. You can allot credits or minutes to multiple people at once by selecting more than one name. Please note that phone-commenting minutes and export credits cannot be returned to your Organization’s total if they are unused.

Removing a User

In your Manage area, click on a user’s name. Scroll to the bottom of the account information that will appear on the right, and click Remove from organization.

You will then be able to choose to Remove or Delete this account.

If possible, we recommend that you remove users rather than delete them. Deleting them will permanently delete all of their work. Users who are removed will no longer be a part of your VoiceThread Organization, but they will still have their accounts, and they can keep and use all the work that they have created. This is great way to allow students to take their “digital portfolio” with them when they leave school.

You can also remove many users at once by selecting more than one of them in your Manager, (using the checkboxes next to people’s names) then selecting Remove. If labels were applied to the accounts when they were created, then you can use the search function to find and remove a large set of users at once. Just enter the search term, e.g., CS83tHE. After the search results are returned, click All to select the entire list, then click Remove.

Using Groups to Organize Classes

Once you have added all of your students and faculty to your organization, you should instruct your Professors to create Groups for their courses, and then add users to them. Instructions for doing this are in our Professor Quick-Start User guide and below.

If you prefer visual instruction to text, a comprehensive video overview for new users can be found here: http://voicethread.com/media/misc/IntroductionToVoiceThread.mov