What an AI connection can and cannot do

A connection can never do more than the person who created it. It is your account, used by something that works unattended and quickly — so everything you cannot do, it cannot do, and a few things you can do are held back from it on purpose.

What it can do

If you run the site

• Read any course on the site, its outline and its lessons.
• Change any course — modules, lessons, lesson content, the order of things.
• Create new courses. They always arrive inactive, so nobody can enroll on them.
• Read how a course is going, as totals: how many are enrolled, how far they have got, how much is waiting to be graded.
• Read one named student’s results on one course.
• Copy a course.
• See everything done through any key on the site — not just your own connections.

If you teach a course

• Read and change the courses you teach, and nothing else. A course that is not yours is not refused politely — it is simply not reachable.
• Read the totals for the courses you teach, and one named student at a time.
• Copy a course, if you have been given that permission. It is worth asking for: copying is the way round a locked lesson.
• Create new courses, if you have been given that permission separately. It is not part of teaching a course.
• See the activity of your own connections.

If you grade work, or write content

You cannot create a connection at all. This is deliberate and is explained in Why some roles cannot connect an assistant.

What no connection can do, whoever created it

• Delete anything. Not a lesson, not a module, not a course. If you ask it to remove a module and it submits a course outline without that module in it, the module stays exactly where it was and the reply tells you it was left alone.
• Make a course available for enrollment. New courses arrive inactive and only a person can activate one.
• Change a lesson a student has already read. Permanently, with no time limit. See The rules that protect a course students are on.
• Export everybody’s results. One named student at a time, and there is no way to ask for the whole class. The totals are available instead, which is what the question “how is everybody doing” actually wants.
• Read the gradebook or question answers in bulk. Refused outright.
• Enroll or withdraw anybody, take payments, change prices, or touch your card details.
• Reach another site. A key exists on one site only. Used against another address it is not a key with the wrong permissions — it does not exist there.
• Do more than you can. Including on courses you do not teach.

A refusal is always reported. If a connection could not do something, the reply says what it could not do and why, in the same words you would be given on screen. Nothing fails quietly.

Limits on how much, rather than what

Separately from the list above there are limits on volume, so that one connection cannot make the site slow for people taking courses. Those are in When an assistant is asked to wait. The short version: large jobs are queued and done steadily rather than refused, and the assistant is told to wait rather than to try again.