We recently upgraded four instances from 2.4.8 to 3.1.1.2 and today I noted that Stage Assignment is missing from Journal Manager and Journal Editor edit roles. Here’s my path:
Navigating to Roles>Roles>Journal Manager/Journal Editor in each instance, I noted that none of the permission level check boxes were enabled. I selected the blue arrow edit button and in the edit window noted that the Stage Assignment feature that allows for setting permissions levels is missing.
When I clicked OK without making any changes and was brought back to the Roles>Roles menu, I noted that the permission level checkboxes were now selected but greyed out. I went back to edit each role again but the Stage Assignment options were still not visible. I’ve attached a screenshot above of what the error looks like in one instance, and a screenshot of the greyed out boxes after I’ve gone in to try to edit the roles.
FYI, I am a site admin but not a programmer so I will be passing on any solutions to our IT department:)
This is intentional. All the stages are enabled, they are just not active meaning that you can not change the values.
But the thing is that when you could edit those selections, they did not affect anything. If you for example removed the journal managers access to all four stages, they were able to access anyway. That is why it does not make much sense to allow users to change those values.
Thanks @ajngya. Just so I understand, shouldn’t this mean that all stages appear enabled but greyed out? Why did my going to Edit change the behaviour–ie. no checkboxes to checked boxes?
This caused some confusion as one of our Journal Managers reported that she temporarily disabled her Journal Manager role because she believed it was causing problems with her ability to access different stages of the workflow (eg. Upon uploading a submission on an author’s behalf under the role of a Journal Manager, she couldn’t access the editorial workflow of that submission)
Yes, all stages for the Journal Manager permission level.
The other thing you are describing is a different issue. If a Journal Manager uses the submission feature, she will be asked in step 1 of the submission form whether she wants to submit as an Author or as an Editor.
If she is doing a submission on behalf of another person, she should choose Editor and it means that she can then access the submission trough the editorial workflow.
If she is actually submitting her own article, she should choose Author and she will then be able to only access the Author Dashboard for that submission. This is of course for situations where some other editor will take care of the editorial process for that article.
But if she is submitting for example an editorial, meaning that she is the actual author of the text but would still like to take care of the editorial process as well, she should choose Editor.
If you end up in a situation that you described, you just need another editor to access that submission and remove the other editors name from the Participants grid where she is listed as an Author. After that the editor can access the editorial workflow of that article again.
Thanks very much @ajngya. Your recommendation is incredibly helpful. Can you speak briefly as to why the permissions did not appear to be enabled and greyed out until I went to Edit change the behaviour–ie. no checkboxes to checked boxes? Is this a glitch?
