Contents

Roles and permissions - Plugixa Exam

The plugin has its own roles, separate from WordPress’s. A WordPress Editor is not automatically an exam Author, and somebody who marks papers does not need a WordPress account with broad capabilities.

Five roles are seeded on activation. You can edit them or add your own.

The roles screen, showing the permission matrix of areas and actions for each role

The seeded roles

Role What it is for
Exam Admin Full access to every feature and setting
Author Builds questions, exams and subjects. Cannot grade attempts or change settings
Grader Marks attempts and reads content. Cannot author or delete anything
Proctor Watches exams in progress. May extend time and allow a resume, but cannot force-submit a paper
Viewer Read-only access to content and results

The Proctor limit is deliberate. Extending time and allowing a resume are recoverable; ending somebody’s exam is not, so it needs a role that is accountable for it.

The twelve permission areas

Each role is a grid: an area, and which actions within it are granted.

Area Actions
Questions create, edit, edit own, delete, view
Exams create, edit, edit own, delete, view, publish
Subjects create, edit, delete, view
Attempts view, grade, unlock, delete
Monitoring view, extend time, force submit, allow resume, pause exam, set note, manage grants
Reports view, export
Cohorts view, create, edit, delete, manage members
Certificates view, issue, revoke, manage templates
LTI view, manage platforms
Webhooks view, manage
API tokens view, manage
Configuration manage roles, manage settings, manage custom fields, manage notifications

Areas belonging to features you do not have simply never come up.

“Edit own”

Questions and Exams each have an edit action and a separate edit.own.

  • edit lets somebody change anything of that kind.
  • edit.own lets them change only what they created.

Grant edit.own without edit for a role that should build its own material and leave everybody else’s alone, which is the usual shape for a department where several people write questions into one bank.

This is enforced, not advisory. In earlier versions the option appeared on the Roles screen without being checked anywhere; since 1.0.0 it is applied to both questions and exams. If you had granted it expecting it to limit somebody, it now does.

Configuration is the dangerous one

configuration -> manage_roles lets a role change roles, including its own. Granting it is equivalent to granting everything, eventually. Keep it on Exam Admin.

The same reasoning applies to attempts -> delete and attempts -> unlock: both change the record of what somebody scored.

How this sits alongside WordPress

A person needs two things to use the admin: a WordPress account that can reach wp-admin, and a plugin role that grants the areas they need.

A WordPress administrator is treated as an Exam Admin, which is why a fresh install is usable before you have assigned anybody anything.

Designing roles for a real team

Who they are Suggested role
Subject lead writing questions Author, with edit.own rather than edit if several leads share one bank
Teaching assistant marking essays Grader
Invigilator for one exam session Proctor. With Pro you can also invite an accountless invigilator by link or PIN
Head of department reviewing outcomes Viewer, plus reports -> export
The person who owns the system Exam Admin

Troubleshooting

Symptom Usual cause
A screen is missing for someone Their role has no action granted in that area. Missing is correct: the endpoint is blocked, not just the menu item.
An Author cannot publish exams -> publish is separate from exams -> create. Grant it deliberately.
Somebody can see all questions but only edit a few That is edit.own working.
A Proctor cannot end a stuck exam By design. Give the task to a Grader or Exam Admin, or wait for the inactivity sweep.
Changing a role did not take effect The permission is read per request; ask them to reload. If it persists, check they hold more than one role.

What to do next

Quick Links

Plugin page Changelog