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Closed-Membership Workgroups

High-trust projects sometimes require strict, pre-approved membership.  To enforce collaboration boundaries (thus creating “closed cohort governance”), you can create closed-membership workgroups for the project.  Once created, you can add the closed-membership workgroup for a high-trust project. 

This article explains what a closed-membership workgroup is and how to create one. 

About Closed-Membership Workgroups

In Rhino FCP, a workgroup is a foundational unit of collaboration, which is often a lab or a small team within a larger organization. You can also add other collaborators, who might be outside of your organization, to the workgroup so that you can collaborate on federated research projects.  For a brief primer on workgroups, see https://docs.rhinohealth.com/hc/en-us/articles/12384883575837-What-is-a-Collaborator.

By default, a default workgroup is not set up as a closed-membership workgroup.  A closed-membership workgroup is a workgroup where Rhino administrators and Workgroup Admins cannot add members. 

Prerequisite

Before you complete this procedure, do the following.

  • The Workgroup Administrator must send a request to the Rhino Administrator to create a new Closed-Membership Workgroup.  The Rhino Administrator will add workgroup members and set the Closed-Membership Workgroup flag to true.  
  • Once complete, the Rhino Admin notifies the Collaborating Workgroup Admin.

NOTE: Once a workgroup is designated as closed-membership, it cannot be changed back to the default workgroup.  At this time, only Rhino Administrators are able to set a workgroup.

Overview

After the prerequisite has been met, the steps for setting up a closed-membership workgroup in Rhino FCP involves three steps and two roles.  The roles are: Collaborating Workgroup Administrator and Project Lead Administrator.  

Here are the three steps:

  1. The Project Lead creates a new project and in the permission policy, sets “Allow Only Closed-Membership Collaborators” to “Yes”.
  2. An admin member of the Project Lead’s group creates a project and adds the closed-membership collaborator(s).
  3. An invitation is sent to the Collaborating Workgroup Admin.  The admin accepts the invitation.

Here are a few additional details.

  • Once a workgroup is established as Closed-Membership, it can be added as a collaborator to a project that is configured to “Allow Only Closed-Membership Collaborators”. 
  • Once a Workgroup is set by a Rhino Administrator as a Closed-Membership Workgroup and that Workgroup joins a project with “Allow Only Closed-Membership Collaborators”, this setting becomes locked and cannot be changed.
  • The Closed-Membership option is enabled by the Rhino Admin setting the Closed-Membership flag to true. Establishing a Closed-Membership Workgroup can only be done by Rhino administrators with approval from the Workgroup Administrator.

Creating Project and Setting the Closed-Membership Collaboration Policies

To set up a closed-membership workgroup, complete the following steps.  Note that this should be done by the Project Lead.

  1. From the main screen, select the Create a Project button, then add the name of the project and a description.
  2. Select the Permissions Policy downward arrow to view policies.
  3. In the Project Level permissions, set the Allow Only Closed-Membership Collaborators policy to Yes.

  1. Finish entering the rest of the permissions. See Specifying a Project's Permissions Policy or more details.
  2. Select Create Project to create the project.

Adding a Closed-Membership Workgroup as a Collaborator

To designate a closed-membership workgroup as a collaborator, complete the following steps. 

  1. In the project that you want to add the collaborator to, select the Collaborator button.

  1. Select the closed membership workgroup you want to add.
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and select the checkbox to approve inviting selected collaborators to this project.

  1. A message appears in the collaborator’s box on the collaborator’s screen that indicates that it is waiting for the collaborator to approve joining the project.
  2. Once the collaborator approves, the closed-membership workgroup members can interact in the group as they would normally.

NOTE: Once a Closed-Membership workgroup has been added to a project, no additional members can be added to that workgroup, only removed (unless it is one of the Project Lead’s workgroups).

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