If you are running a large experience, or just want to assign designated mentors, leaders, or assistants to your teams of learners to monitor their progress, help keep them on track, and offer general support, observers are the solution.
Grant read only access to mentors on a team by team basis
Observers can see all team activity including milestones, submission, conversations and more.
By adding observers to your experience and assigning them to teams, they will be able to follow the team's progress right from the beginning of a project. Observers are given read only access to team activity such as milestones, submissions, conversations and more, so they can follow along and offer support as needed.
General
Access
When a member of your experience is assigned as a observer to a specific, team, they will have read only access to the team's:
Activity feed
Application (if applicable)
Conversation with the project administrators
Members, invites, and member requests
Kickoff
Matched project
Milestones and submissions
Worklogs
Final submission
Messaging
While observers have read only access to the team's conversation with the project administrators, they also have the ability to join the conversation and participate by sending messages, files, and booking meetings should they choose to.
Privacy
Because observers are given access to potentially sensitive information, all learner's within the team will be warned at the start of the project that observers have been or may be assigned to their team and have access to the data previously mentioned.
How to
Enable / disable observers
This can only be done before any teams are created within the experience.
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Settings" tab and then "Features" in the "Project management" group
In the "Learner settings" section, select "Enable observers for teams" or "Disable observers for teams"
Click "Submit" to save this setting
Add an observer to a team
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Members" tab
Click the member you want to add as an observer for a team
On the member's page, select the "Observees" tab
Click the "Add" button and then select the team you want this member to observer
Click "Submit" to save
Remove an observer from a team
Navigate to your experience
Click on the "Members" tab
Click the member you want to remove as an observer from a team
On the member's page, select the "Observees" tab
Click the trash icon next to the team you want to remove this member as an observer as
View a team as an observer
Click on "My Observees" in the main navigation menu
Select the team you want to view as an observer
Join a conversation as an observer
Click on "My Observees" in the main navigation menu
Select the team you want to join the conversation of as an obvserver
On the team page, click on "View conversation"
Click "Join conversation"
Leave a conversation as an observer
Navigate to the conversation you want to leave
Click the 3 dot ellipsis menu on the conversation
Click "Leave conversation"
Best Practices
Even though teams are warned that observers are present when they start a project, it is best that you inform your learners as well through other means that observers are enabled to ensure they are absolutely aware of this fact and that items such as their conversation messaging can be seen by others.
FAQs
Can I enable observers after teams have been formed on my experience?
No. Because of the sensitive nature of having read access to an entire team's work activity, you are only permitted to enable observers before any teams are created, thus ensuring that every team knows that observers are enabled at the time they are formed.
Can members with the 'Guest' role be observers?
Yes, members with the 'Guest' role can be observers. If you wish to designate a guest member of your portal as an observer, simply follow the instructions provided above.