Overview
WebMO groups are collections of users, such as students in a course (eg, "organic" or "chem_103_01") or members of a research group (eg, "smith"). Each group has a group administrator (eg, "admin-organic", "admin-chem_103_01", or "admin-smith").
Groups administrators are responsible for managing users and jobs in their group. They can also set group permissions (within limits set by the overall administrator) and define custom job templates.
Groups are very convenient when multiple courses use the same WebMO instance, as each group administrator (instructor) can add or delete WebMO users (students), monitor and download their jobs (assignments), but doesn't see other groups (courses).
Logging in as a Group Administrator
To access the group administration features, login to WebMO as the user admin-{group}, e.g., "admin-organic", with the group administrator login password.
WebMO Group Administration Manager
Administering a Group
The group administration manager page allows various actions within the group:
Add Users: New users may be added as described in User Manager. Users can also be added by external authentication if it is enabled and the user provides the group newuser password.
Edit Users: User passwords, preferences, and permissions may be edited as described in User Manager.
Set Group Defaults: Default Job time limits, Enabled interfaces, and enabled servers/queues may be edited as described in Group Manager.
View Jobs: Group Jobs may be viewed, monitored, or killed as described in Job Manager.
Customize Calculation Types: New templates for calculation types may be created and edited as described in Template Manager.
However, a group administrator cannot make any changes to the overall WebMO installation. This must be done as the WebMO administrator (admin).
User Manager
The Group User Manager defines the users that are allowed to use this instance. Users can be added individually with New User, or in bulk with Import Users and a CSV spreadsheet. Users and their jobs can also be deleted individually with Delete, or in bulk with Batch Delete. See User Manager for details.
User properties may be edited by clicking the Edit icon (
). See Edit User Profile for details on changing the Password and Preferences (E-mail address, Job notifications, and Archive format). The Permissions tab specifies the job time limit and engines of a user. By default these are same as the group settings. However, it is possible to increase (within group limits) or decrease job time limits and allow different engines for specific users.
See User Manager for detailed descriptions of these tasks.
Group Administration User Manager Page
Group Manager
The Group Manager controls permissions for the group. For example, it might be desirable to allow research groups to have access to ab initio programs (Gamess, NWchem, PSI4, ...) and longer job limits, whereas introductory course students might be limited to semi-empirical programs (MOPAC, xTB, ...) and shorter job times. Job time limits are limited by the overall administrator and the Service Tier to which one is subscribed for WebMO Cloud.
The group administrator can also disable job execution for a group, which will allow group users to access their previous jobs but not submit any new ones. This could be useful at the end of a semester when new jobs are no longer permitted.
Group Admininistration Group Manager Page
Job Manager
Group administrators have full control over the jobs of their group members. They can monitor, display, search, delete, import, export, rename, move, and copy jobs within their group using Job Manager.
This is very useful in a classroom when the instructor wants to monitor the jobs being submitted by students, or display the results of different student jobs to the entire class.
See Job Manager for details.
Group Administration Job Manager Page
Template Manager
WebMO calculation types (Molecular Energy, Geometry Optimization, Vibrational Frequencies, ...) are based on pre-defined templates. Sometimes it is desirable to define additional templates for specific purposes, such as running pre-defined jobs in a classroom setting or running jobs with customized settings in a research setting.
Group administrators can create new templates that are visible to all members in their group. This is typically done by editing or extending existing templates.
See Template Manager for details.
Group Administration Template Manager Page
Group Passwords
There are two passwords associated with a group:
- Login password: This password allows the group administrator to login to WebMO. It may be changed by the group administrator through the User Manager.
- Newuser password (available in Enterprise, but not Cloud): This password allows new users to be created and join the group by external authentication. It may be changed by the group administrator through the Group Manager, if external authentication has been enabled by the WebMO administrator.