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Planning Your iTunes U Site

Each iTunes U site, and its structure and content, is organized in an easy-to-use hierarchy of folders and files, or pages and items. As an administrator, you can use this structure as a starting point. Before you start populating your iTunes U site with content, you should take time to further plan your site’s organization, including its structure, user authorization, and access permissions.

To set up and apply user authorization and access permissions properly, you must organize your content into a structure based on the amount of content you will provide and the desired access for your users.

For example, to keep your site and user access simple, you can use the following structure.

In this example, you can control user access by providing access to the entire site or restricting access to specific Course pages, or down to individual groups in the English Course page.

If you have more content, or need more restrictive access, the following structure might be more appropriate.

In this example, you can control user access by providing access to the entire site or restricting access to a specific descendant Welcome page, specific Course page, or down to individual groups in the English Course page.

You can create pages within your iTunes U site for both private and public content. If your content is for public use, any user can access the page and view and download the information. If your content is for private use, you define a specific group of users who can access the page and how they can view, download, or edit the information. For these users, you must send user information to iTunes U that officially identifies the user’s role and confirms that the user is allowed to access the information. To do this, you create a credential definition identifying the user (for example, the user’s role, attributes, identifier) and assign that credential the page access you want (for example, download, edit, and so on).

Depending on how you want to control access to your site, you can use either:

• Basic access controls. Using basic access controls is recommended when your content is for public use, you only need a small group of one or more administrators, and you do not rely on a transfer script to access your site.

  For each page within your site, you can choose whether the page is accessible to the public, accessible only to administrators (private), or accessible based on the access of the page used to navigate to the current page (inherited). For example, in the first diagram above, you can specify on a per-page basis whether users can access a specific page or not. You can specify that all Course pages are public except the English Course page. You can choose to make the English Course page private while you continue to edit the individual groups within the course page. In this way, you can stage the page until it is ready to be released to the public.

  For more information, see “Controlling User Access to iTunes U Pages Using Basic Access.”

• Advanced access controls. Using advanced access controls is recommended when you have both public and private content, define custom credentials for your users, and use a transfer script to access your site.

  For each type of user you define, also known as a user credential, you can assign different access levels for pages, or hierarchy of pages, within your site. The access level you assign at your site’s root page is inherited throughout all the pages and groups of your site. This access level can be explicitly overridden in the definition of a descendant page or group. For example, in the second diagram above, if you assign a user credential download access to the Institution Happenings Welcome Page, and its descendants are Course Page Guest Speaker and Course Page Global Affairs, by default the user credential automatically receives download access to these descendant pages.

  The combination of a user’s credential and the specific access level you assign to that credential define the authorization, actions, and permissions the user has to a particular page, group, or hierarchy of pages. To get you started, iTunes U provides you with built-in user credentials. You can also create credentials for the specific types of users accessing your site.

  For more information, see “Understanding Credentials and User Access for Advanced Access” and “Controlling User Access to iTunes U Pages Using Advanced Access.”

For more information about user access, actions, and permissions, see “Controlling User Access.”