Project Permissions Strategies

At Uncountable, permissions give you the flexibility to control who can view and modify project data, ensuring that the right people have access at every stage. This guide offers an overview of Uncountable permissions and walks through strategies for handling common permission scenarios.

Overview of Uncountable Permissions

At the highest level, material family-wide permissions are on the User Groups tab on the User Administration panel. These permissions dictate the user group’s baseline level of access to Inputs, Outputs, and Experiments in that material family.

For the purpose of this article, we will be focused on Experiments permissions. Inputs and Outputs permissions are not covered, as they do not affect a user’s ability to view or edit project or experiment data. Learn more about Inputs and Outputs permissions.

Experiments Permissions

Experiments permissions dictate the user group’s access to the individual experiments created within the platform, including their inputs (ingredients and their amounts) and outputs (measurements). For Experiments, permission levels include:

• None: Users have no access to experiments.
• Read (Outputs Only): Users can view experiment measurements, cannot view inputs.
• Read: Users can view experiment measurements and inputs, but cannot edit them.
• Write (Outputs Only): Users can view and edit experiment measurements, cannot view or edit inputs.
• Write Outputs, Read Inputs: Users can view experiment measurements and inputs, but can only edit measurements.
• Write: Users can view and edit both measurements and inputs.

Once user group permissions have been set, additional access can be granted for individual projects via their Project Permissions page and individual experiments by sharing the experiment directly.

Key Considerations

When thinking about permissions, there are a few other important things to keep in mind:

1. Users must belong to a user group. All Uncountable users must belong to a user group, which determines their baseline level of access to the platform.
2. Permissions are additive. This means that if a user group has “Read” or “Write” permissions to Experiments, these permissions cannot be carved out for individual experiments or projects within that material family.
   • Ex: If a user group has “Read” Experiments permissions, you cannot restrict them from viewing a specific experiment or project. Instead you would have to give them “None” Experiments permissions and then grant selective access to the experiments or projects that they can view.
   • Ex: If a user group has “Write” Experiments permissions, you cannot prevent them from editing a specific experiment or project (unless the experiment is locked). You would instead assign the user group more restricted Experiments permissions (”Read” or “None”) and grant selective permissions for experiments or projects from there.
3. Users automatically get “Write” permissions to their own projects. Regardless of user group permissions, users automatically get “Write” permissions for all projects that they create within a material family.
4. Child projects inherit permissions from their parent projects. This ensures consistent access across related projects. However, admins can also customize these permissions, overriding inheritance to apply more restrictive permissions at the child project level. Learn more about child project permissions.

Project Permission Scenarios

Read-Only Access to Experiments

Scenario: You want a user group to be able to view all projects and all data within those projects, but you don’t want them to be able to edit anything.

Solution: Set the user group’s Experiments permissions to ”Read”.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Grant “Read” permissions for Experiments.

Note: This does not apply to the user’s own projects— any project they personally create, they have “Write” access to by default.

Read and Write Access to Experiments

Scenario: You want a user group to be able to view and edit all projects and all data within those projects.

Solution: Set the user group’s permissions to “Write” for Experiments.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Grant “Write” permissions for Experiments.
3. Optional: To also allow users to add new experiments to projects, enable “Add Experiments”.

Admin Rights with Full Experiment Access within a Material Family

Scenario: You want to create a user group with broad access to both administrative functions and experimental data. This setup is ideal for roles like team leads or managers who need to oversee user accounts, permissions, and experiment data across the material family.

Solution: Grant “Write” permissions for Experiments and enable “Admin Rights”.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Grant “Write” permissions for Experiments.
3. Enable “Admin Rights”.
4. Optional: To also allow users to add new experiments to projects, enable “Add Experiments”.

Admin Rights with Limited Experiment Access within a Material Family

Scenario: You want to create a user group focused on managing user accounts and permissions without access to experiment data. This setup works well for lab administrators or support staff who handle platform administration but aren’t involved in recipe formulation, testing, or data analysis.

Solution: Grant “None” permissions for Experiments and enable “Admin Rights”.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Grant “None” permissions for Experiments.
3. Enable “Admin Rights”.

Opting Users into Only Select Projects

Scenario: By default, you want a user group to not be able to see or edit any projects within a material family. Instead, you want to grant selective access per project.

Solution: Set the user group’s Experiments permissions to “None”. On the individual project, grant either “Read” or “Write” permissions for that user group.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Set Experiments permissions to “None”.
3. To grant additional permissions to an existing project, access its Project Permissions. On its Project Permissions page:
   • Select the user or user group to share the project with.
   • Set whether you want to grant “Read” (view only) or “Write” (view and edit) access.
   • Use the “Add Experiments” checkbox to determine whether or not users in that group should be able to add new experiments to the project.
4. To grant additional permissions for a new project, configure Group Permissions in the Create New Project modal.
   • Select the user or user group to share the project with.
   • Set whether you want to grant “Read” (view only) or “Write” (view and edit) access.
   • Use the “Add Experiments” checkbox to determine whether or not users in that group should be able to add new experiments to the project.

This setup allows you to choose which users can access each individual project within that material family. You can choose to share some projects broadly while only sharing others with a select few. Any project that you do not grant additional permissions for will not be visible or editable to any user in that user group.

Opting Users into Only Select Experiments

Scenario: By default, you want a user group to not be able to see or edit any experiments within a material family. Instead, you want to grant selective access per experiment.

Solution: Set the user group’s Experiments permissions to “None”. Then share individual experiments with select users or user groups.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Set Experiment permissions to “None”.
3. Optional: To also allow users to add new experiments to projects, enable “Add Experiments”.
4. On the experiment, access the File menu and select “Share”.
   • To share the active experiment, select “Share Active”.
   • If you have multiple experiments in view and you want to share them all, select “Share All”.
5. In the Share modal:
   • Select the user or user group you want to grant access for.
   • Set whether you want to grant “Read” (view only) or “Write” (view and edit) permissions.
   • If the experiment contains component experiments, use the check the “Include component experiments?” box to grant additional permissions for these.

This setup allows you to choose which users can access each individual experiment within that material family. You can choose to share some experiments broadly while only sharing others with a select few. Any experiment that you do not explicitly share will not be visible or editable to any user in that user group.

Restricting Users from Viewing Experiment Ingredients and Amounts

Scenario: You want a user group to be able to view/edit experiment results but you do not want them to view and edit the experiment recipe (ingredients and their amounts).

Solution: Set the user group’s permissions Experiments permissions to either “Read (Outputs Only)” or “Write (Outputs Only)”.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Set Experiment permissions to:
   • “Read (Outputs Only)” if you want them to be able to only view results.
   • “Write (Outputs Only)” if you want them to be able to view and edit only results.
3. Optional: To also allow users to add new experiments to projects, enable “Add Experiments”.

Restricting Users from Editing Experiment Ingredients and Amounts

Scenario: You want a user group to be able to view/edit experiment results but only view the experiment recipe (ingredients and their amounts) without making changes.

Solution: Set the user group’s Experiments permissions to either “Write Outputs, Read Inputs” or “Read”.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Set Experiments permissions to:
   • “Read” if you want the user group to be able to only view experiment inputs (ingredients and their amounts) and results without editing either.
   • “Write Outputs, Read Inputs” if you want the group to be able to both view experiment inputs (ingredients and their amounts) but be able to view and edit results.
3. Optional: To also allow users to add new experiments to projects, enable “Add Experiments”.

Child Project Permission Scenarios

In Uncountable, sub-projects created within another project are referred to as “child projects”. By default, child projects inherit permissions from the parent project they are created within. However, these permissions can be configured separately. Learn more about child project permissions.

Restricting Users from Editing Parent Projects

Scenario: You want to allow a user or user group to view both parent and child project data while restricting editing access to only experiments in the child projects.

Solution: This requires two permissions sets on the parent project, one which grants “Write” permissions to the parent and child projects and a second which grants “Read” access to just the parent project. Then, set permissions required to create new child projects to “Read”.

Steps to Configure:

1. In the parent project, set “Write” permissions for the user group and apply to all child projects.
2. In the same parent project, grant “Read” read permissions for that user group, but this time don’t apply to all child projects.
3. On the Select Project page, click the cog icon associated with the parent project and select “Edit Project” to access the Edit Project Information modal.
4. Within the Edit Project Information modal, set Permissions Required for Creating Children to “Read”.

Restricting Users from Viewing or Editing Child Projects

Scenario: You want to allow a user group to view and edit a parent project while preventing the group from viewing or editing child projects created within the parent.

Solution: Set the user group’s Experiments permissions to “None” permissions. Set the parent project’s Project Permissions and “Write” without applying changes to descendent projects.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Set Experiments permissions to “None”.
3. Configure permissions for the parent project:
   • Access Project Permissions.
   • Select the user groups to add permissions for.
   • Grant “Write” permissions.
4. When adding to project, leave the “Apply changes to all descendent projects?” box unchecked.

This setup grants the user group “Write” permissions for the parent project only, with no access to other projects (including child projects created from the parent project). To grant permissions for individual child projects, go to each child project’s Project Permissions page and add either “Read” (view only) or “Write” (view and edit) permissions for the user group.

Restricting Users from Creating New Child Projects

Scenario: You want to prevent a user group from being able to create new child projects within a parent project.

Solution: Set the user group’s Experiments permissions to “Read”. On the parent project, set Permissions Required for Creating Children to “Write”.

Steps to Configure:

1. On the user group’s permissions page, add a permissions set and select a material family. To apply these permissions to all material families, select the “Set for All”.
2. Set Experiments permissions to “Read”.
3. On the Select Project page, click the cog icon associated with the parent project and select “Edit Project” to access the Edit Project Information modal.
4. Within the Edit Project Information modal, set Permissions Required for Creating Children to “Write”.

Restricting Users from Creating New Parent Projects

Scenario: You want to prevent a user group from being able to create new parent projects. They should only be able to create child projects, nested within a parent.

Solution: Enable “Require Permission to Create Root Project” for the material family. On the user group, set Experiments permissions to “Read”.

Steps to Configure:

1. Access the Manage Material Families tab of the Company-Wide Settings page.
2. Enable the “Require Permission to Create Root Project” setting for the material family.
3. On the user group’s permissions page, set Experiments permissions to “Read” for that material family.

This setup will require users to select a parent when creating new projects within that material family.

Note: If you want to give some users within that user group the ability to create parent projects, that can be done by granting them “Write” permissions on the parent project’s Project Permissions page.