Learn how the Administration page lets you manage users and apply universal settings to your workspace.
If you are an administrator on your company's MediaSilo workspace, you have access to the Administration section. This is where you can change your workspace settings, add multiple users to your workspace at once, view your usage totals, and much more. In this article, we will cover each tab in Administration:
To access the Administration page, click the gear icon in the navigation bar on the left.
Users
The first tab in Administration is dedicated to user management. Here, you can see a complete list of users in your workspace, the date they last accessed this workspace, the date they were added to this workspace, and their user type. If a user is grayed out, this means an administrator has changed the user’s status to inactive. An inactive user does not have access to this workspace and does not count towards your contract’s user limit.
Add Users
To add a single user or multiple users to your workspace, start by clicking the blue Add Users button.
In the “Add Users” window, you can enter multiple email addresses. Be sure to hit the tab or enter key after each email address, so they are highlighted in blue.
Select a user type and default role for the users, and then assign them to projects in your workspace.
You can also add these new users to distribution lists or tag them with new or existing user tags. These two fields (Distribution Lists and User Tags) are optional.
Under User access permissions, you can give users access to Spotlight. If this toggle is turned off, then the users cannot create or customize Spotlight templates.
When you are done entering emails and choosing settings, click the blue “Add Users” button at the bottom of the window.
User Filters
On the left side of the page, you will see a list of projects in your workspace and a list of user tags. You can filter the user list on the right by clicking the projects or tags on the left. You can also filter by user type (user, administrator, or manager) and user status (active or inactive).
Update a User’s Information or Project Access
To update a user’s information (such as their email address) or to change their access to projects, click the options button at the end of the user’s row and select “Edit User.”
This opens the Edit User window. On the left side of the window, you can update the user’s email address, their user type, and their default role on projects. You can also apply or remove user tags.
Under Feature Access, you can control the user’s access to Spotlight. If this toggle is turned off, then the user cannot create or customize Spotlight templates.
In the bottom left is the option to “Deactivate User.” Once you deactivate a user, the user cannot access your workspace until you reactivate them. An inactive user does not count towards your user limit.
On the right side of the Edit User window, you can view and edit the user’s project assignments. Use the dropdown menu in the Permissions column to change a user’s role on a specific project. For example, a user might be an internal collaborator on one project and a public collaborator on a separate project.
To remove a user from a project, click the dropdown menu and select “Remove.”
To give the user access to a project, search for the project under “Search for Projects,” and then click the Add button. The user is assigned their default role, which you can change as described above.
When you are done making changes, click the blue “Save User” button in the bottom right.
Delete Users
To remove a user from the entire workspace, open the options menu at the end of the row, and click “Remove User.”
In addition to “Remove User,” this menu also includes the “User Insights” option. Clicking this redirects you to the Insights page, so you can see which links the viewer has interacted with.
To delete multiple users at once, please see the following section on bulk actions.
Bulk Actions
You can bulk-edit users by clicking the checkboxes next to their names and clicking the Actions button in the top right.
This opens a menu where you can add users to a project, remove them from a project, change their status, add them to a distribution list, and more. Select Manage notifications from the options menu if you want selected users to receive upload notifications whenever files are uploaded to projects they are assigned to.
Bulk-editing users can save time if you want to disable a group of users when a season ends and then reactivate them once a new season begins. To do this, filter your user list by selecting a project on the left. Then, click the checkbox next to “Name” to select all the users. Next, click Actions > Change status for users. Finally, select “Inactive” from the Status menu to make the selected users inactive. Note that inactive users do not count against your contract's user limit.
To export a list of users as a csv or xls file, click “More” in the top right and select “Export Users.”
If a filter on the left side of the screen is selected, then the exported spreadsheet only includes the filtered list of users, not the entire list of workspace users. The spreadsheet includes both active and inactive users; their status is indicated in the spreadsheet's “Status” column.
Manage Distribution Lists
You can access distribution lists by clicking the More button in the top right and selecting Manage Distribution Lists. To learn more about editing lists and creating new ones, please see our article on Distribution Lists.
User Tags
You can apply tags to users to save time later. For example, you can share a file with multiple users by entering a single user tag in the Recipients field in the Share window. This way, you can add an entire group of tagged users at once, without entering each user's name individually.
To apply a tag to multiple users, click the checkboxes next to their names. Then, click the Actions button and select the Add tags… option.
This opens a window where you can enter tags. Be sure to click Confirm when you are done.
You can filter your user list by selecting the tag on the left side of the page.
Settings
General
Under General, you can manage how users download files from your workspace:
- You can restrict users to downloading a file with its original filename only (the name of the file uploaded to MediaSilo), or
- You can give users the option to download a file with its original filename or its asset title (which can be edited in MediaSilo)
To edit an asset title, a user must have view and edit permissions in the corresponding project.
If you want workspace users to download a file using the original filename only, turn off the toggle “Allow users to download files using the edited asset title rather than original filename.”
To give users the option to download a file using the filename or the asset title, turn on the toggle.
This will reveal a second toggle, so you can set the default behavior. To download files using the asset title by default, turn on the toggle. To download files using the filename by default, keep the toggle off. This default behavior is applied whenever a user clicks the download button in the top right.
Whether the second toggle is on or off, users will have the option to download a file using the filename or the asset title by accessing the file’s options menu.
Security
If you want to require Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to access your workspace, turn on the MFA toggle in the Security section. To learn more about enabling MFA, please see Control Workspace Access with Multi-Factor Authentication Policies.
Links
Click Links on the left side of the page to choose your default link settings. These settings apply to all Review Links sent from your workspace. For example, you may want to allow downloads and request feedback on all new links by default. You can also choose defaults for your link access type, the number of days until a link expires, the link message, and view notifications.
Note that these are only the default settings. Users can still change these settings (if they have the necessary permission set) when they send their own Review Links.
Users
In the Users section, you can set the number of days until a user is deactivated due to inactivity. Turning on Deactivate inactive users will not automatically deactivate users. Instead, it will perform a check upon each login: if the user has passed the limit of days, then they will be blocked from accessing the system.
The option to Allow access to all users in this account affects how workspace users can contact each other within MediaSilo. For example, when the toggle is on, a user can share a private Review Link with any user in the workspace, even if they don’t have any projects in common. When the toggle is off, the user can only share the link with another user if they have at least one project in common.
This toggle also impacts user mentions in Projects. When it’s on, MediaSilo automatically suggests users from your entire workspace. When it’s off, MediaSilo only suggests users if you share projects with them.
The Users section also includes the option to Enable Spotlight access for all new users. When this toggle is turned on, new workspace users will automatically have access to Spotlight, where they can create and customize templates. To change a user’s Spotlight access, go to the first tab in Administration – the Users tab – and click the three-dots button at the end of the user’s row. Then, select Edit User and change their Spotlight access under Feature Access.
The last section in the Settings tab is Email. Here, you can configure your MediaSilo account to send select MediaSilo emails using your own SMTP server. To learn more, please see Send Emails through an SMTP Server.
Roles
The Roles tab in Administration gives you a complete list of default and custom roles available in your workspace. Click the options menu at the end of a row to edit, duplicate, or delete a role.
“Default” roles are pre-made roles that come with every workspace and are based on industry needs. These roles include: Uploader, Asset Manager, and Project Owner. With the exception of Project Owner, roles can be modified or deleted to meet your specific needs.
As an administrator, you can also create new roles with custom permission sets for your workspace. To do this, click the blue Add Role button in the top-right corner of the page. Enter a name for the new role, and click the checkbox next to each permission you want this role to have.
To learn more about permissions in MediaSilo, please see our User Permissions Guide.
If you are deleting a role that is currently in use, you are asked to choose a new role to assign to anyone using the deleted role. This way, users are not left without an assigned role.
Usage
The Usage tab provides an overview of your current account usage, including the number of active users, your current storage, and your average storage (month to date).
By selecting SafeStream on the left side of the page, you can see the allocation of your SafeStream minutes across all the projects in your workspace. To export this data as either a csv or xls file, click the Export button on the right.
Branding
Go to the Branding tab to update your workspace’s name or to upload your workspace icon. This icon appears at the bottom of the navigation bar, directly above your profile image, and is visible to anyone who accesses your workspace.
You can also upload your brand logo, which is used in Review Links, Spotlights, and Presentations. Whenever you create a Review Link with more than one file, this brand logo appears at the top of the Review Gallery. Your brand logo is also automatically applied to all pre-made templates in the Spotlight Template Library.
SafeStream
The last tab in Administration is SafeStream. Here, you can see a complete list of the default and custom watermark templates on your account. Click the gear icon on a template to edit, clone, or delete the template.
To create a new watermark template, click the blue “New Template” button in the top right. For a step-by-step guide to creating templates, please see Create and Manage Watermark Templates.
Under Watermark Settings, you can enable watermarking for all new projects created in your workspace and set the default watermark template for your workspace.
To learn more about SafeStream, including duration requirements, please see SafeStream Watermarking.