How to restrict the functions a teacher can use and the computers a teacher can monitor

AB Tutor offers all those logged on with administrative rights some very powerful features. 

We recommend that network administrators do not allow all users administrative access, but that they carefully control who has access to which computers and the functions that these users can access. 

To do this, you need to:

- Set Start-up Passwords
- Create Classroom Groups
- Set restrictions on teachers connecting to these groups

Setting Start-up Passwords

There are two levels of access to the Tutor program:

Administrator and Tutor.  Access to both of these are controlled by start-up passwords.

The Administrator access level allows a network manager to control how the Tutor program connects to other workstations through its settings, group management and policy management tools. It also allows an administrator to restrict Tutor level access to pre-set groups and to limit the functions that are available to tutors connecting to those groups. The Administrator has access to some very powerful features (such as controlling windows policies) and should therefore be limited to users with sufficient technical and networking expertise.

Tutor access rights are simply to prevent unauthorised users from using the program. The administrator controls whether to enable this security level or not. Someone at Tutor access level cannot get to any of the configuration options within the system and cannot connect to workstations outside the classroom groups created by the administrator.

The following table gives an overview of the restrictions available:

By default, no start-up passwords are set in AB Tutor. 

To set start-up passwords, select the Tools menu followed by Settings and click on the Password tab.  

Both passwords can be left blank, in which case no password validation will take place on start-up and full administrator access will be granted to whoever launches the program. To secure your network, it is strongly recommended that you create passwords for both tutor- and administrator-level access as soon as possible, carefully control who has access to these passwords and change them on a regular basis in case they have been inadvertently disclosed. 

An administrator is able to control the functions of AB Tutor to which he wants his teachers to have access by setting restrictions on classroom groups - see below. 

Creating Classroom Groups

Since AB Tutor will scan and connect to all computers on the school’s network (with the client program installed and running), it will find computers located in other classrooms. In a large network, this could run into hundreds of computers. To limit the computers or users to which a teacher has access, you must create a separate classroom group consisting of the computers or users (identified by their names). 

To control the functions that a tutor is able to use with that group, you can set restrictions for that group.  

To set up a classroom group; go to Groups, Manage Groups.

Press the  button to add a new classroom group.
Enter the name of the classroom (by right-clicking on the and selecting edit).
Press the  to add a new computer name to the classroom group, or the add user icon  to add a new user to the group.
Add additional computers and/or users until all have been added.
Press OK when done or Cancel to abort the additions.

To remove an unwanted PC or user from a classroom group, highlight them and click on the  button.  A warning message will be displayed to confirm the delete operation.

To remove an unwanted Classroom, highlight it and press the Delete button  to remove it. A warning message will be displayed to confirm the delete operation.

Once Classroom groups have been added, then each time the Find button is pressed or when the Tutor program first starts up, a tutor will be given the choice of which group to connect to.  (Only those logged in as administrators can select ‘All’Computers.) 

There is a quicker way of creating a classroom group, if you are able to see all the clients which you want to add to the group. Launch AB Tutor as normal and wait until you can see all your clients.  Select those you wish to add to a classroom group and select Group, Add to New Group.  Click right on the and edit to add the name of the classroom group.

You also have the option to select groups from an AD domain by clicking on the Active Directory tab:

You can use a command line parameter when starting the Tutor program which will automatically select a group.

Syntax  -g

e.g. ABTutor.exe -g "My Classroom"
(Enclose a group name in double quotes if it contains a space)