Blocking User from a Session???

Andy Krogh

Is there a way to block a specific email from accessing a session without making the whole session email enabled? Currently have a project where someone has forwarded the session ID to a user who is not allowed to add comments or corrections to the project.

The only way I know how to do it would be to add them to the session specifically, send and invite to the session and then deny them access to the session.

Carina

Could you turn on "Restrict users" in the settings? This will allow only an owner to invite, and anyone who has the ID and requests to join will sit in "pending" until an owner accepts them in.

Ryan Arbuckle

@Carina That seems like a good suggestion. When someone tried to join after I restricted access, this is what I saw.

https://support.bluebeam.com/online-help/revu20/Content/RevuHelp/Menus/Window/Panels/Studio/Studio-Permissions-Sessions--M.htm

'To restrict access to this Session to only those users listed on the Attendees tab whose Access is set to Allow, select Restrict Attendees.

The relationship between this setting and a user's Access status (either Allow or Deny) lets you set up the equivalent of a "white list" or a "black list" and merits some further explanation:

When Restrict Attendees is checked, only users listed here on the Attendees tab whose Access is set to Allow will be able to access this Session. This is the equivalent of a "white list."

When Restrict Attendees is not checked, any user can access the Session except for those listed here on the Attendees tab whose Access is set to Deny. This is the equivalent of a "black list."'

Andy Krogh

The problem with using the Restrict Attendees is that we use a generic email for our divisions IE Planning@City…

Then the Planning tech opens the session invite and determines who the planner(s) is that it is to be assigned to and forwards the invite. If we restrict the attendees then planning will have to send us the email of who the planner(s) are so that we can add them to the approved list.

The same thing would happen with our Fire and Engineering departments. And it would be the same when we send the session our to a consultant company for review. The consultant might have up to 6 people neededing to be added if the session is restricted.

It would be helpful if there was a way to add a denied (blocked) user to the session without having to do the restricted session.

I value both of your advise and for this specific we are restricting the session, but the tech is going to have to add several emails to the approved list.

RJ Palis

@Andy Krogh - Can you create a group permission role and enter the emails? From here you can restrict per Role assigned to an email:

Luke Shiras

@RJ Palis that sounds like a good solution but I don't think it will work with their workflow.

Someone creates the session and invites the generic department email. Then the Planning Tech person forwards the invite email to the person within the dept who will be working on the project. I'm guessing the Planning Tech is not the person who created the session, so they can't add attendees and the person who set up the session doesn't know who will be on the project when they set it up.

You could make a group for each project and update the members once they are known but that's the same as adding individuals to the invite. The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a consistent team to group together to make it practical.

Or maybe I misunderstood what @Andy Krogh was describing.

Duane Gingras

I use unrestricted sessions as well for the same reason, we don't know in advance all the participants. If bluebeam could log the users who join (this is true for restricted or unrestricted) then the owner could block out users that have joined. Ths wouldn't prevent a first join though as that needs to happen at least one time for Bluebeam to log the users.

Alternatively an option to add in a list of known emails to deny access, I don't like these though as this list now needs to be maintained.

However this then requires another question to @Andy Krogh, if you have participants that need to be blocked whould it not be better to start from a restricted session? Or start from a session that has reduced interaction? I would imagine the typical risk of an unwanted attendee would be the individual downloading the files (their markups are easily deleted if they're doing crayola work) so I would recommend setting up your unrestricted reviews with 'Save As' and 'Print' disabled. Then they are left with the less productive screenshot technique to copy the file.

@Luke Prescott I think a better solution would be to have a second toggle for unrestricted sessions that will prompt the Session Owner to grant access on first connection. Like this, but only shows up when you disable the restrict attendees option.

Another tab on the Sessions tab with a quick yes/no for access. This would only happen for Unrestricted session. The assumption is for restricted, you have deliberately picked your participants.

Luke Prescott

Thank you all for the great discussion on this. We are in active research to understand opportunities to improve Sessions and Projects access and control. Including Matt Mauer and @David Vallejo for visibility. We'll be sure to post back here later next quarter with more information. Again, thank you for the great discussion!