How do I manage video viewing permissions, and create and manage Panopto folders?

Each Canvas site has a base Panopto folder named after the course site.

Caution: Do not change the permissions in the base Panopto folder!

The members of a Canvas site are divided into two groups that have differing permissions with respect to that folder:

  • Enrollees/Students, Guests, and Observers are assigned to a Viewers group;
  • Instructors, Faculty Assistants, TA/TFs, and Course Support Staff are assigned to a Creators group.

There are two criteria that Panopto looks at to determine whether someone can view a video (in Panopto, videos are called "sessions"):

  • Permission: Does the user have permission to view that session?
  • Availability: Is the session set to be available to view?

Permissions and availability can be determined by individual session, or by the folder in which the session exists, if applicable. 

Recordings of  Zoom class sessions (scheduled via the Zoom tab on the Canvas site) will be processed by Panopto and are placed into the base course Panopto folder; recordings of in-person classroom sessions are placed in a subfolder that has availability "never".

The base Panopto folder can contain subfolders. These subfolders can be created by anyone with Creator status. Folders can be set to have certain permissions and availability settings as default.

A group/person can have permission to view a folder and its contents, but sessions within that folder may be "available"/not available (determining if it can be viewed or not). Availability, as well as permissions, can be set at the folder level or for each individual video. 

You should use the availability setting over permission settings whenever possible.

If you wish to prevent people viewing (some) sessions in the base Panopto folder set the "Availability" setting on the base folder to "Never (unless set on session)" and then do one of two things.

  • As suggested by the prompt, edit each particular session you wish to be made viewable by changing its availability status to "now".
  • Create subfolders within the base folder that have an "Availability" setting of "Immediately" and move videos from the base folder into that subfolder to make them available to view.
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