A Panopto departmental folder is a specific video folder that has been designated as belonging to a particular department, unit, or group of people. Creating a departmental folder gives you an increased ability to manage the videos contained within that folder. For example, you can share your videos with other people who have access to the departmental folder. You can also create specific video playlists within the folder.
In addition, departmental folders allow for the creation of custom video workflows. You can use either the Approval workflow or Availability workflow.
In the Approval workflow, videos will not be visible to viewers until someone with the Panopto role of Publisher approves them. When a new video is added to the folder, the Publisher will receive a notification and can choose whether to approve the video, thereby making it visible to viewers, or reject it. If no one has the role of Publisher for a specific folder, this notification will be sent to Panopto administrators.
In the Availability workflow, rather than controlling video availability by having a publisher approve or reject them, availability is based on particular dates and times. You can set a date and time when videos in the folder will become available, and the videos will remain hidden until the set date and time are reached. You can also set an end date and time after which videos will cease to be available to viewers. You can set this availability window at either the individual session (video) level or the folder level. Note that, in the event of a conflict, settings for an individual session will override settings at the folder level.
For information on how to use departmental folders and approval or availability workflows, as well as how to share folders with other users, see Panopto's documentation:
If you have questions or would like to request a departmental folder, please email academictech@uchicago.edu with your request.