HOWTO: Enable Self-Service Feeds

ProGet administrators control who can access and manage various feeds by permitting or restricting users and groups. Without setting these permissions or restrictions beforehand, users will have to constantly contact an administrator to perform routine tasks.

With Feed Groups in ProGet, administrators can enable self-service feeds, allowing teams to act autonomously without affecting the rest of ProGet. When properly configured, a user can create and manage their own feeds without having to rely on an administrator.

In this tutorial, we’ll describe how to use ProGet’s Feed Group feature to configure which feeds a user can access and manage, which feed groups users can create new feeds in, as well as set permissions for users so they can act autonomously in their designated feeds.

You can immediately start making feed groups assuming you have have administrator control in ProGet. We recommend connecting your company’s LDAP directory or Active Directory domain, but this feature can function normally with ProGet’s built-in user directory. We also recommend setting up user groups ahead of time.

Step 1: Navigate to Settings > Manage Feed Groups

Step 2: Click “Create Feed Group”

On the Manage Feed Groups page, click [Create Feed Group] at the bottom right of the page and a pop-up will open.

Step 3: Input Feed Group Information

In the pop-up, the information you enter will create a feed group for users to act within.

For Name: type the name of the desired team. We’ll use the “Devs-Chicago” for this demonstration.

For Feeds: you have the option to associate any existing feeds with your feed group. Select the appropriate feeds from the drop-down menu.

Click [Save]

Feeds on the Feed page are now divided between groups and “Ungrouped.”

Step 4: Add Feed Group Permissions

Navigate to Admin > Manage Security > Tasks / Permissions and click [Add Permissions]

In the pop-up, select the desired user or user group ("Principals"), their feed group ("Feed or group"), and the Manage Feed task.

Click [Save Privilege].

“Manage Feed” allows the users of the group to create new feeds, manage their feed settings, add/push new packages, download and view packages, and promote packages to other feeds within the feed group.

Permissions and restrictions can be very granular in ProGet, so we strongly recommend reading the full breakdown of them in our guide about permissions.

After Feed Groups have been Configured

Users can now manage their own feeds within their allowed groups without having to reach out to a ProGet administrator.

For example, Josh from Devs Chicago will only see the Devs-Chicago feed group. Note the pencil icon (✏) on the right of the line item, indicating Josh can manage the feed (change settings, configure a drop path, etc.)

Compare this to an administrator, who can see and manage all feeds.

Now, when creating a new feed, users will be see the "Feed group" line but are restricted to their allowed feed groups.

For example, Josh from Devs Chicago can only create a new feed in the Devs Chicago feed group.

Compare this to an administrator who can create a feed in any feed group, or ungrouped (“none”).

Troubleshooting

Permissions

Please read the “Troubleshooting Permissions” section of our granular ProGet permissions guide.

How to Check a User’s Permissions

Users may contact an administrator asking why they can’t do a certain function in ProGet. Users may come across errors that occurred because they do not have permission, thus they must contact an administrator to continue.

In these instances, an administrator can check what permissions or restrictions a user has via the settings page.

To check, navigate Settings > Users & Tasks.

Click the [Test Privileges] button in the bottom left of the page.

In the pop-up, type in the user you want to test and select the feed you’d like to test them on.

The window will populate with a list of that user’s permissions on the selected feed.

Delete a Feed Group

Only administrators can delete a feed group. Non-administrator users (ex. Josh) cannot access the settings page of ProGet and thus cannot delete a feed group.

On the Settings page, navigate to Manage Feed Groups.

On the Manage Feed Groups page, there will be a list of all feed groups.

Click the ❌ of the feed group you want to delete.

The deleted group’s feeds will now be moved to “Ungrouped.”