The Problem

When we added Brightspace to our digital learning environment this fall, we added an integration to Panopto. One of the complexities of getting systems to work well together is that sometimes they don’t play well together due to unique system requirements. We found one of these requirements in setting up Brightspace. When selecting what username to use with Brightspace we discovered that we could not use the Wentworth email address as we had used in Blackboard. Using an email address as the username would have interfered with the email functionality that instructors use heavily and required that we disable that functionality. So instead, we used the username part of the email address and were able to set up Single Sign-On.

When we added the integration to Panopto, however, we discovered a problem. For Panopto to recognize users as the same person and unify the accounts, the username had to be the same. So, Panopto created new accounts when users entered the system from Brightspace.

For users who have never used Panopto, this won’t be a problem. For users with extensive content in their “unified” accounts, this presents a challenge. However, this challenge is not insurmountable. With a few tweaks to permissions, you can see the content of the “unified” account in the “Brightspace” account. You can even move the content from one account to the other if you ensure the permissions are correct. So, how do you accomplish these tasks?

Adding Permissions to Panopto Folders

Unfortunately, you can’t add permissions to your “My Folder” in Panopto. But you can add permissions to subfolders. Since most users with a lot of content have this content in folders by course, you can simply add your “Brightspace” Panopto user account to the folder with the same permissions as your “unified” user account. To see the permissions set on a folder, click on it to display the content, and then when in the folder, click on the gear icon at the top right corner of the page to see the folder location and sharing information:

In the settings window, on the overview tab, you will see the parent folder location. This is the account that the folder is associated with. In the example below, the folder is in the unified account of Ron Frattura (fratturar@wit.edu). “Unified” accounts were created when users logged in from Blackboard.

In the Share tab, you can see which users (accounts) can access this content. In the example below, in addition to course access, only my unified account can create content. Using the invite people section, I can add my “Brightspace” account to this folder.

To add another account to share a folder, start typing the user’s name or username in the Invite People text box. If you are in your “unified” account, you will be looking for a “Brightspace” user, if you are in your “Brightspace” account, you will be looking for a “unified” user.

Note: You’ll want to add usernames with the following patterns:

• \Brightspace\WIT-username
• \unified\WIT-email-address

These will give access to your accounts and not to your account associated with a course or specific video.

After selecting the account, select the permissions for the share, you’ll want to have the creator value selected to be able to edit or move any content. In the example below, I’ve left the notify box checked so that I receive an email when the change occurs. You can leave this unchecked if you prefer not to have the extra email. Click the Send and Save changes to add the sharing to your second account to the folder.

Once you have shared with your second account, you will see both listed under the sharing access-list along with the associated permissions – they should be the same:

Once you’ve done this on your “unified” account, you should set up folders to receive content on your “Brightspace” account and share with your “unified” account. Sharing all folders with both accounts will make it easier to move content from one account to another.

Moving Content

Once you have permissions set on your folders, you can move content by the folder from one account to another. Enter a folder to see your videos. Click the checkbox to the left of the video – if you see a preview the checkbox will be in top left of the preview image. A series of buttons will appear at the top toolbar, one of them will be move, click the Move button:

In the Move Sessions window, start typing the name of the folder the new location for the videos, and a list of options available to you will appear:

Select the location you want for these videos and a move button will appear. Click the move button to move the recordings to their new locations.

By selecting multiple videos, you can move many videos at once. Repeat this process for additional folders.

We will be modifying accounts in Panopto, hopefully before summer 2021, to unify all the accounts. Our Blackboard contract ends on June 30, 2021. Access to Panopto will end before that date when we end access to Blackboard. You will not lose any content- it will remain in the Panopto accounts that you have. We will either manually move the content or, working with Panopto, unify the existing accounts.

More information to come as we plan this part of our journey.