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Request group folders for your class instance on IDAS

An instructor can request group folders in the IDAS instance (computing environment) for their class. These group folders can be used by students in the class for group projects.

1. Email research-computing@uiowa.edu and let us know:

   1. Your class name and number. Please include the section number, for example, FIN:1200:0003.

   2. How many group folders you want for your class.

2. ITS - Research Services staff will set up group folders for your class and let you know when the folders are ready.

3. You can then add students to each group folder using Access Management. Please see details in the section below.

4. After students have been added to their groups, it will take about 1-2 hours for permissions to propagate through the system. If students have an

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1. IDAS session running, they will need to restart their

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1. session using the steps here for the changes to be picked up.

2. Students can access the group folders in the classdata folder in the IDAS class instance.

The group folders will be set up as follows:

1. We usually create the folders with the names group01, group02, group03, ... to ensure consistency in naming.

2. The following permissions are used for the group folders:

   1. The instructor of the class is the owner of the folders and has rwx permissions to the folders. The instructor can view, copy and edit files inside the folders.

   2. For each group folder:

      1. The instructor can add specific students to each group folder using Access Management, as outlined in the section below. The students who are given access to the folder will have rwx permissions to that folder. Those students can view, copy and edit files inside the folder.

      2. Everyone else in the class will have no permissions to view files inside the folder. That way, only members of a group can view files inside their group folder.

3. The group folders are created inside the classdata folder, because classdata is a shared location that can be accessed by more than 1 student in the class.

Add users to group folders using Access Management

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1. Login to Access Management - https://iam.uiowa.edu/access.

2. Under "Services", click on "Interactive Data Analytics Service" and then click on the name of the class and group folder you want to edit.

3. In the "Members" tab, click the "Add" button. Image Removed

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4. In the popup that opens, enter the Hawk IDHawkID, name, or email address of the user you want to add and click the search icon.Image Removed

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5. In the list of search results, click on the user you want to grant access to the group folder. 

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 to add additional users as needed.

7. Click "Accept".

Remove users from the group folders using Access Management

1. Login to Access Management - https://iam.uiowa.edu/access.

2. Under "Services", click on "Interactive Data Analytics Service" and then click on the name of the class and group folder that you want to edit.

3. In the "Members" tab, check the boxes in front of the names of the users that you want to remove from the group.

4. Click "Remove".Image Removed

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5. The users will no longer be able to access that group folder.

Accessing the group folders

After the group folders have been created, they will be in the classdata folder in the IDAS instance for the class.

In JupyterLab, the group folders will be visible inside the classdata folder as in the following screenshot.

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In RStudio, the group folders will be visible inside the classdata folder as in the following screenshot.

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Using the group folders

In Terminal, these folders can be listed out with the usual ls command, such as:

ls -al ~/classdata/group01

Below are a few issues or questions that students may have while working with the group folders.

Example 1 - A student created a file in group01 but other members of group01 can’t view or edit that file.

Suggested steps: the student who created the file can use Terminal in IDAS to set permissions again if needed: 

cd ~/classdata/group01
chmod 770 file-name

Example 2 - Students want to check what files are available inside their group folder and what the permissions of the files are.

Suggested steps: Members of the group can check the permissions of the files using Terminal, for example:

cd ~/classdata/group01
ls -al

Other Support Articles

• Requesting IDAS for your course

• Accessing the shared class folder on IDAS

• Navigating Jupyter Notebook and RStudio

• Troubleshooting Common Issues

Contact

If you have any questions or comments, please contact contact research-computing@uiowa.edu.