How to Assign Roles at the Course Category Level

Overview

Category enrolments in the Learning Management System (LMS) allow administrators to assign roles to users at the course category level, giving them access to all courses within that category. This approach simplifies user management for multiple courses in the same category and ensures consistent role assignments across all courses in that category.

In this tutorial, we will walk you through how to assign roles in a course category.

NOTE: This function of assigning roles via categories is most useful for LMS Only subscribers.

IMPORTANT: Using category enrolments may cause performance problem. If performance issues occur, it is recommended to use Cohort sync instead. This approach requires adding a cohort sync enrolment method to each course in the category. To learn more, see the tutorial: How to Enrol a Cohort in a Course v2

Step Tutorial

1. Navigate to Site Administration → Courses → Manage courses and categories.

2. On the Manage course categories and courses page, click on the kebab menu (three-dot icon) for the category and select Permissions:

3. From the Permissions dropdown, select Assign roles.

NOTE: This will display all roles in the system that have Category checked under Context types where this role may be assigned in Site Administration → Users → Define roles.

4. On the Assign roles page, select the role you wish to assign to the course category by clicking on the role name.

5. Once a role is selected, choose the users you want to assign to that role:

1. Click a user’s name to select them.
2. To select multiple users, hold down the Ctrl key while clicking each user, or highlight them using your mouse.
   

Once done, cick Add to assign the selected user/s to the role.

IMPORTANT:

1. If a user already has a system-level role (e.g., LMS Admin) and you assign them a different role at the course category level, the user will have both roles simultaneously—their original system-level role plus the newly assigned category-level role for courses under that category.
2. Removing a user from the category role assignment will automatically unenrol them from the courses under that category.
   

And that's how to assign roles in the course category in the LMS!

Congratulations on completing this tutorial. We hope this has been helpful to you and your organisation. For any questions or concerns regarding this function, please reach out to the contact support via email.

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FAQs

Can I remove a user from a category role without affecting other courses?

No. Removing a user from a category-level role automatically unenrols them from all courses under that category. To remove them from only specific courses, you must adjust their enrolment at the course level instead.

What happens if a course is moved to another category?

If a course is moved to a new category, users assigned via the original category enrolments will remain enrolled in the course, but their roles from the original category will be removed, effectively setting them to No roles.

To restore their role-based access, you can either:

1. Assign roles again at the new category level, or
2. Manually set the user’s role for that course via Course → Participants.
   

Using Cohort sync is another option to maintain consistent enrolments across courses automatically.

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