Groups let you give selected users access to media in selected Categories – without raising their Role to give them access to the whole media library.

Users with the Role “User” or “Producer” normally see and manage only their own media. With Groups, an Administrator can let those users view or manage media owned by others, but only in the Categories the Group has been given access to. Roles with broader permissions (Publisher and Administrator) already have account-wide access and are not affected.

Before you start

Who can set up Groups: Only Adminstrators

Who benefits: users with the Role “User” or “Producer”. Publishers and Administrators already have access to all media.

Availability: Available to everyone.

Plan your Categories first. Groups give access per Category, so you need a Category structure that matches how your teams work (for example one per department or project).

Why use Groups?

By default, access to media is decided by the user’s Role and by who owns the media. Groups add a second layer so you can share media for a specific team or project without changing anyone’s Role. Typical uses:

Collaborate within a team – give several users access to the same Categories without opening the whole library.

Separate departments – let each team work with its own content without seeing unrelated media.

Give view-only access – let users view media owned by others without being able to change it.

Share responsibility for media – give a team "Manage media" access when several people need to maintain the same content.

Build structured access with hierarchical Categories – organise content by department, team or project, and grant access only where needed.

Key concepts

Quick start: give a team access to a Category

This example gives the Marketing team view-only access to the Category “Campaigns”.

1. Go to Settings → Users → Groups and create a Group, for example “Marketing”.
2. Add the team’s members to the Group. Only users with the Role “User” or “Producer” gain anything from membership.
3. Repeat steps 1–2 for every other Group that needs to keep working in “Campaigns”.
4. Open Settings → Metadata → Categories and open the Category “Campaigns”.
5. Choose the Group “Marketing” and set the access level to Manage media.
6. Save. “Campaigns” is now restricted: only the Groups you added can work with it.
7. Check the result: sign in as (or ask) a Marketing member and confirm they can see media in “Campaigns” but cannot add or edit
   

You can configure the same access from either place: on the Group (Settings → Users → Groups) or on the Category (Settings → Metadata → Categories). Both change the same setting

Access levels

Access is set per Category, so the same Group can have different levels in different Categories. Choose one level for each Group and Category:

Choosing a level: use View media for people who only need to watch, publish, use or review, Manage media for people who share responsibility for the content. Own media is automatic for users to keep working only with their own media in a Category that is otherwise restricted.

About “Own media”

“Own media” is not something you set up on purpose. It is the consequence of a Category becoming restricted: users who already own media in that Category keep the right to manage their own media there, even though they are not in a Group with access. They do not see other users’ media and cannot add new media.

The only reason to select Own media yourself is to revert access that was given to a Group by mistake, so that the Group’s members are back to managing only their own media.

Moving media: if a user moves media they own to a different Category, they cannot move it back into a restricted Category where they only have Own media access.

Example setup: shared marketing assets and private work in progress

This example shows how the access levels work together in a realistic account, and why you would choose each one. Use it as a pattern for your own setup.

The scenario

A company has Marketing, Sales and HR teams. All users have the Role “User”. Publishers and Administrators are not part of the example because their Role already gives them access to everything.

The company wants three Categories:

• • Work in progress – everyone can work on their own material here without publishing it to a shared Category. Each user only sees their own media.
• • Marketing assets – intros, outros and other shared building blocks. Marketing owns them and keeps them up to date. Sales may use them in their own videos but must not change them.
• • HR – only HR may work with HR media. Nobody else should see that the Category exists.

Step 1: Create the Groups

Create one Group per team and add the members. The Groups describe who the users are. They do not give any access until they are assigned to a Category.

Step 2: Decide the access level for each Category

The access levels describe what each Group may do in each Category.

Step 3: Assign the Groups to the Categories

Follow the recommended order from the warning at the top of this article:

1. 1. Create all three Groups and add their members first.
2. 2. Leave Work in progress without any Group. It stays unrestricted.
3. 3. Open the Category Marketing assets and assign both Groups before you save: Marketing with Manage media and Sales with View media. If you saved after adding only the Marketing Group, Sales would lose access to the Category.
4. 4. Open HR and assign the HR Group with Manage media.

Until you assign a Group, a Category is unrestricted: every user sees it and can add media to it, but sees only their own media. The moment you save the first Group on a Category, it becomes restricted and access follows the Groups, as shown below.

What each user can do afterwards

How Group-Based Access works

A user’s Role gives their baseline permissions. Group-Based Access is an extra layer on top, applied Category by Category.

• Groups add access; they never take away what a Role already gives. Publishers and Administrators keep full access.
• Restricting a Category is what limits other users. Once a Group is given access to a Category, users who are not in a Group with access (and who do not own media there) no longer see that Category.
• Ownership does not change. A Group only extends access to media owned by other users.

Groups and hierarchical Categories

Group-Based Access works with parent and child Categories, and each Category has its own access setting. A user can have access to a child Category without having access to its parent.

Example structure:

• Company
  • Marketing
    • Campaigns
    • Events

Group A has Manage access to “Campaigns” only. For a member of Group A:

• “Campaigns” is fully available – they can view, add and manage media there.
• “Company” and “Marketing” are shown in the category tree as restricted, so that “Campaigns” can be reached. The user cannot place media in them.
• “Events” is not available
  

A user can see a Category if any of the following is true:

• their Role gives them access (Administrator or Publisher);
• one of their Groups gives them access;
• they own media in the Category;
• it is the parent of another Category they can access (shown as restricted); or
• no Group access has been set on it (Unrestricted).

Group access is reflected wherever users browse, filter or assign Categories.

Groups and Single Sign-On (SSO)

If Single Sign-On is enabled on your account, group membership for SSO users is controlled by your identity provider (the SSO federation), not by Quickchannel. Quickchannel Groups still decide what those users can access – only the way users are added to Groups is different.

How it works

• Groups are matched by name. If a Group in Quickchannel has exactly the same name as a group in your SSO federation, users who have that group in the federation are automatically added to the Quickchannel Group when they sign in. They then get the Group’s access to Categories.
• Quickchannel learns about SSO groups at sign-in. An SSO group is created in Quickchannel when a user who belongs to it signs in. Before that, the group is not visible in Quickchannel. Administrators can also create the matching Group in advance, which is recommended for new accounts, but it is not required.
• SSO users cannot be added to Groups manually. Apart from the automatic assignment above, SSO users cannot be added to Quickchannel Groups. They only inherit the groups they have in the federation, and only if a Group with the same name exists in Quickchannel. This means SSO settings cannot be bypassed by assigning users to Groups manually.
• Editing a group does not show SSO users as members. Quickchannel only knows SSO users who have signed in, so a Group’s member list does not list its SSO users as unseen SSO users may have access to the group. This differs from Groups for non-SSO users, where all members are known and listed
  

Set up Groups for SSO users

1. Ask your SSO administrator which groups the federation sends for your users and the exact group names.
2. In Quickchannel, go to Settings → Users → Groups and create a Group with exactly the same name for each SSO group you want to use. Names are case-sensitive, so “Marketing” and “marketing” are different groups. You can do this before any users have signed in (recommended for new accounts), but it is not required.
3. Give the Group access to the relevant Categories, following “Quick start” above and the recommended order in the warning at the top.
4. Ask users to sign in. Their Group membership is refreshed every time they sign in, so a user who is removed from a group in the federation loses that Group’s access at their next sign-in
   

Good to know

• Several Groups: a user can belong to more than one Group. If two Groups give different levels in the same Category, the higher level applies.
• Removing a member or deleting a Group: the user loses the access that came from that Group. Media they own stays theirs.
• Existing media: when a Category becomes restricted, its media keeps its owner; access for others is decided by the Groups.
• Limits: A user can be a member of at most 20 groups. A category can have a maximum of 20 groups assigned.

Troubleshooting

Related articles

Users page – Managing users, roles and groups

Metadata page – Managing categories, tags and properties

Hierarchical categories

SSO related articles