New Authz/RBAC feature in Verawood: permission to create course?

Site Operators
1

Hi,

While testing the new Authz/RBAC feature, but the “Course Admin” does not allow to create courses. How do we give permission to someone to create courses within an org ?

There is an option from the user to request that permission

Capture d’écran, le 2026-08-12 à 11.49.07
Capture d’écran, le 2026-08-12 à 11.49.071702×380 83.2 KB

and it says that the request is pending, but pending where ? As a super admin, I don’t see anything about that.

2

This is one of the worst documented parts of the platform, sadly, and isn’t new with RBAC. In order to grant the permission the process is:

  • User requests the permission as you did
  • An admin goes to the Studio Django admin “Course Creators” app (/admin/course_creators/coursecreator/)
    • This app does not exist in the LMS admin, which is what causes a lot of the confusion
  • Admin changes the status and selects applicable orgs from the list or “All Orgs” and saves
  • User should now be able to create courses in Studio

I’ve been working with the platform for something like 10 yrs and just learned this a month ago. I’ll write up a how-to doc for the docs site about it today.

3

Wait… what is the Studio admin vs LMS admin ? There are two Django admin panels ?!

4

Indeed :pensive_face: , and they have overlapping but not the same apps. Yet another reason we’re considering trying to consolidate the two.

5

Mind blown…

and where is that documented ?

This is the first time in 2 years of using OpenEdX that I stumble onto that information…

I never had a clue that there was a studio.edx./admin different from edx./admin …

6

Honestly I’m not sure either one is explicitly documented. The LMS admin is the one used 99% of the time, so gets referenced a lot more often in docs. Most, if not all, references in docs.openedx.org to Studio/CMS admin are in release notes. I’ll try to add a doc to the site operator concepts along with this PR so at least there will be something that people can find.

7

Thanks!

To be honest though, it makes little sense that a “Course admin” can manage permissions, but can’t actually create a course. That should be fixed in the RBAC implementation.

8

I don’t disagree, but it is somewhat more complicated by the fact that several orgs have whole workflows with different requirements around the way things currently work. I think Product has opinions on the way it should evolve. Jenna could probably use your feedback if you’d like to get in touch with her about it.

9

Who is Jenna ? :slight_smile:

10

This would be @jmakowski :smile:

11

Just following up here, @TyHob wrote documentation :raising_hands: thanks Ty!

Find them here: Grant Course Creation Access in Studio — Latest documentation