Skip to main content

The Knowledgebase

Study Abroad: Maintenance Permissions

Maintenance permissions are high-level system permissions that can have far-reaching impact on your Terra Dotta site. 

 
This article covers the following topics related to Maintenance permissions:

 

Self-Service Permissions

Most Maintenance permissions are self-service, meaning that they can be assigned through Staff > Staff Permissions by anyone who has access to edit a user's permission set. However, due to the nature of these permissions, it is recommended they be assigned sparingly and only to users who need them most and who understand the functionality to which they provide access. The following are able to be assigned as needed:
  • Email Tests
  • Login Attempts
  • Sent Email
  • System Errors
  • SIS Refresh
  • Merge User
  • Scrub Application
  • Scrub Program
  • Scrub App Cycle
  • Convert User
  • Edit User
  • SIS/HR Tests
  • Text Interface
  • Cross-Site Scripting

Let's take a look at each of these permissions in more detail:

Email Tests

This permission lists your current system contact email addresses and allows an admin to initiate test emails to those addresses to ensure system emails are being delivered as expected.

Login Attempts

This permission allows an admin to see a record of all attempted logins to their site and provides details about the identity of the person attempting to log in, when they made the attempt, and whether or not the attempt was successful.

Sent Email

This permission provides a log of every system-generated email delivered through the site in the past 60 days. Because confidential topics may be discussed via email, it is recommended to give access to the Sent Email log only to those who need it.

System Errors

This permission provides a detailed report of errors generated in your Terra Dotta site.

The majority of the errors being generated on your site and logged under Maintenance > System Errors are not critical. They can result from such things as an expired browser session, a user going to pages in their web history, or a broken connection to the server. These are common and expected to occasionally happen.
 
The error log can be very useful to the Terra Dotta support team when investigating a report of an issue on a site that is producing an error. All errors are logged by their date and time and with a unique ID#. When submitting a Support request, it can be very useful to reference the unique ID# of the error in the log that you are reporting, along with the details of the steps you took to produce the error.
 
A sudden spike in errors is usually symptomatic of an issue that needs to be investigated. Should you receive an unusually large number of error reports, submit a Support request to have the errors investigated by Terra Dotta.

SIS Refresh

Allows a user to access detailed SIS refresh logs and manually initiate a SIS refresh for the site (used only on sites integrated with a SIS/HR directory).

For more detailed information, refer to the Getting Started with the SIS Refresh Knowledgebase (KB) article. 

Merge User

Gives the admin the ability to merge two user identities on the site and deactivate unneeded accounts.

For more detailed information, refer to the Resolving Duplicate Accounts and Profiles in Terra Dotta KB article.

Scrub Application

This permission allows an admin to completely (and irreversibly) delete a user's application from your site.

Important Note: It is not recommended to scrub applications from your production site as this permanently and irrevocably removes the applications from your database. As the "Scrub Application" option was designed to be a maintenance tool used to remove test data from sites, it is highly suggested that you consider other options for managing miscellaneous applications.

See the Deleting/Scrubbing an Application article for recommended options and full details. 

Scrub Program

This permission allows an admin to completely (and irreversibly) delete a program from the site.   

Important Note: It is not recommended to delete programs from your site because this action might accidentally remove critical application information that is stored in the program records. Applications to that program would no longer be connected to a program and would lose their location and date information.
See the Deleting/Scrubbing a Program article for recommended options and full details.

Scrub App Cycle

This permission allows an admin to completely (and irreversibly) remove an unused application cycle. Application cycles with associated applications cannot be deleted as those applications would become orphaned due to missing data. Therefore, you would need to scrub associated applications before being able to scrub the app cycle.

To scrub an application cycle:

1) Navigate to Maintenance > Scrub App Cycle. A list of all app cycles will appear in a table with several column headers, including Term, Year, Active, Dual Year Term, and # of Applications. Only app cycles for which there are no current applications will display a "Remove" button in the first column of the table.

2) Click "Remove" to proceed with scrubbing your app cycle. A dialogue box will appear asking you to reconfirm your decision.

Convert User

This permission allows an administrator to find a non-SCL user and convert them to an SCL-user or to import a batch of users to convert.

Edit User

Important Note: Core data fields for integrated users are not editable in this interface. Edits for internal, integrated users must be made in your institution's student information system (SIS) or HR directory before being pushed to Terra Dotta through your integration. 

This permission permits an admin to edit the core data fields (username, name, internal/external, integrated/non-integrated, email, DOB, gender, confidentiality indicator) of an external user's account and reset their password and security credentials.

In the search field provided in Maintenance > Edit User, enter the name or email address of the applicant for whom you need to make an edit and click "Search". From the list of records that appear, select the radio button next to the applicant's name and click "Next".

The core data fields are displayed in an edit screen where changes can be made and saved. 

SIS/HR Tests

This permission alows an admin to perform search tests of integrated SIS and HR systems to ensure user data is being imported as expected.

Text Interface

This permission allows an admin to edit specific default text coded into the website.

For more detailed information, refer to the Text Interface Customization KB article.

Cross-site Scripting (XSS) Protection 

This permission, a series of two settings located under Maintenance > Environment Settings, permits an admin to override Terra Dotta's native cross-scripting protections when editing in a WYSIWYG editor on the site.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a category of attack vectors used by hackers to attempt to exploit public websites for a variety of purposes, among them phishing: a way of tricking users into providing personal information through fraudulent web pages, often designed to resemble another legitimate website.

An example is a pop-up prompt asking the user for private information and then sending the information to another site or database.
 
Terra Dotta provides built-in protection from XSS attacks. The technique employed for XSS blocking is referred to as "blacklisting", meaning the removal or disarming of certain content elements within a page request that could be exploited for XSS.
 
By default, no users are permitted to post a set of "blacklisted" HTML and JavaScript code in their requests. The blacklists are environment settings that can be modified to include or exclude elements, and the overall XSS protection can be disabled at the host level or at the user level. Some authorized users may be permitted to post normally blocked elements for the purposes of rich-content authoring, such as embedding videos or iframes.
 
While the base element lists provided as default settings are effective against the most common XSS vectors, there may be novel vectors that basic XSS protection may not account for.
 
To complete the list of event handlers that ought to be blocked:
 
1. Go to Maintenance > Environment Settings.
 
2. Scroll all the way to the bottom and find the following two settings:
XSS JavaScript Event List for Form Elements
XSS JavaScript Event List for URL Data
 
3. Set the variables as follows (without carriage returns):
 
onclick, ondblclick, onkeydown, onkeypress, onkeyup, onmousedown, onmouseout, onmouseup, onmouseover, onblur, onchange, onfocus, onselect, onload, onabort, onunload, onmousemove, ondragdrop, onerror, onmove, onreset, onresize, onsubmit, javascript: 
 
4. Click Update.
 
As new XSS vectors emerge, we will enhance XSS protection as needed.

Terra Dotta provides a security permission to waive all content restrictions to either individual users or groups, allowing users with this permission to create rich/dynamic content such as embedded videos. The permission is:

Maintenance: allow posting of blocked script elements in WYSIWYG content (override XSS blocking).

Users with this permission will be exempt from the XSS protection measures when using a WYSIWYG editor. Note: Any content added by a user with this permission will be rendered inoperable again if that content is edited and saved by a user without this permission.
 
Hosted Terra Dotta clients can have their Primary Admin User open a support request to ask for this permission for the admin users who need it.

 

Permissions Requiring a Request to Terra Dotta

The Data Import/Export permission can only be granted to administrators by a member of Terra Dotta's Support staff. Please open a case with Terra Dotta Support to request a user be granted this Maintenance permission.

For more detailed information, refer to the Data Import/Export Utilities KB article.  

 

 

Permissions Not Granted to Clients

The following permissions are not granted to clients hosted in Terra Dotta's server environment:

  • Unrestricted Access 
  • File/Folder Check*
  • Task Scheduler
  • SIS/HR mappings*
  • Environment Settings
  • Settings Inspector
  • Version Info*
  • Task Logs*
  • ColdFusion Logs

*Permissions denoted with an asterisk (*) were available for assignment on client sites prior to the Terra Dotta Study Abroad 19.0 release. If one of these permissions was assigned to you prior to the 19.0 release, it will not be removed automatically. However, you will not be able to assign it to new users and, if it were to be removed from your account, you will not be able to have it reassigned to you.