Kaltura - Groups [UW-Madison]

Kaltura groups allow collections of users to more easily manage and collaborate on Kaltura media and channels.

What is a Kaltura group?

A group is a single manageable account that represents a collection of users. A group is a unique type of user that can have individual users as part of it. Groups allow multiple users to more easily co-own media. Kaltura groups can be assigned as co-editor, co-publisher, and can be added to a category or channel just like users can. After a group is assigned to a piece of media or a channel, all the individual users in the group inherit the permission of the group. For example, if the group is assigned as the owner of a piece of media, then all users in the group will be treated as if they own that media too.

How are Kaltura groups named?

Kaltura group names follow this naming convention: "G" - "a campus School/College/Institute/Division shortname" - "department (if appropriate)" - "group name" separated by dashes. An example group name is G-DOIT-AT-Learn@UW-Madison.
Table of academic departments and short names
School / College / Institute / Division  Shortname
 College of Agriculture & Life Sciences  CALS
 Wisconsin School of Business  WSB
 Division of Continuing Studies  DCS
 Division of Information Technology  DOIT
 School of Education  EDU
 School of Engineering  ENGR
 Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies  NIES
 School of Human Ecology  SOHE
 Law School  LAW
 College of Letter & Science  CLS
 School of Medicine & Public Health  SMPH
 School of Nursing  NURS
 School of Pharmacy  PHARM
 School of Veterinary Medicine  VETMED
 University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries  LIB

We do not list departments due to the potential length of the list but use the Registrar's curricular subject area codes to keep things consistent. We don't use spaces in group names so that the group name and group ID match. Kaltura group IDs cannot contain spaces. The group ID is what shows up in search when adding a group to a piece of media as an owner, co-editor, or co-publisher.

How are Kaltura groups created / managed?

Groups are created and managed manually by the Learn@UW-Madison team. Because of their manual nature they are not currently a viable option for groups of people whose membership changes frequently. Requests can take a couple business days to fulfill. If you would like request a group or change membership, complete one of the following forms:

How do you use a Kaltura group?

A common use case for groups is for media that should be owned and managed by a collection of individuals or an organization, for example:

  • A group of individuals who are collaboratively designing and teaching a course.
  • Instructional video designed to be used across all English 101 sections rather than in one instructor's courses.
  • Marketing videos produced by a communications group rather than an individual staff member.
  • Technology orientation videos managed by a team rather than an individual instructional designer.

In each of these cases, assigning ownership of a video to a group rather than an individual user allows any member of the group to:

  • See the video in their Kaltura My Media.
  • Edit the video and its metadata.
  • Use Canvas's rich text editor to insert the video into Canvas courses.
  • Use My Media to grab embed code to embed the video outside of Canvas.

How do you see the media that your Kaltura group owns?

First display your My Media:
  • In Kaltura MediaSpace click your username in the upper right and select My Media.
  • In Canvas click your account icon in the upper left and then select Kaltura My Media.

By default Kaltura displays all of the media that the user individually owns along with all of the media owned by any of that user's groups. If a user wants to focus on just the media that their groups own, the user can click the Filters button and then select under Ownership Media my Group Owns. This will display all of the media owned by any of that user's groups.

A screenshot showing Kaltura's "My Media" filters. A "1" indicates the "Filters" button while the "2" indicates the "Media My Groups Owns" filter.

This document was adapted from Kaltura's Group Support in Kaltura Applications and Kaltura Groups FAQ guide and UW System's Groups KB article but adapted for UW-Madison.