Bulk Actions
The functionality described in this section is available in the following backend list views:
- Reading Groups List, displayed when selecting Reading Groups from the main menu
- Reading Group Annotation list, displayed when selecting the Annotations sidebar in the Reading Group Detail View
- Annotations and Comments lists, nested under the Records in the main menu
- Users list, displayed when selecting the Users submenu nested in the Records main menu
Only users logged in with Admin accounts can access and engage with these views.
The Purpose of Bulk Actions
In backend list views displaying Reading Groups, Annotations, Comments, or Users, administrators have the opportunity to select one or more—or all—list items and delete them from the system in one action. Making life easier for folks managing their Manifold instance is the animating idea behind this feature. Instead of needing to individually select and remove inappropriate content or accounts one at a time, with Bulk Actions you can do it in just a few clicks.
We’re talking about situations when your instance is bombed with spambot-created Reading Groups or when you get notice of a myriad of flagged annotations following a class discussion that went sideways or when, during the course of routine maintenance, you discover a host of AI-generated ads living as comments generated by a dubious account.
Bulk Actions work in conjunction with the search bar associated with lists displaying Reading Groups, Annotations, Comments, or Users. This means you can refine whatever default list is currently on display and then use Bulk Actions to remove all or some of those items that match your search parameters. Thus if you know that user Bad Actor is adding spam annotations, you can search for that user and then remove those annotations that are spam, singly or in bulk. And then you can delete the user account as well.
Users can flag annotations or comments in the frontend annotation drawer for review by an instance administrator.
To learn more about how Flagging works in Manifold in the Reporting Inappropriate Content section.
Performing Bulk Actions
The Bulk Actions button at the top of lists displaying Reading Groups, Annotations, Comments, or Users is the means by which an administrator can select one or more items in those lists for deletion. When this button is selected, three things happen:
- the Bulk Actions button is replaced by two buttons, Bulk Delete and Cancel,
- a clickable link reading Select All appears at the end of the status line, and
- check boxes manifest before each list entry.
The new Bulk Delete button will not be operable until at least one item is selected from the list. The Cancel button returns the list to its default state, moving the system away from the bulk deletion process.
There are a number of ways to select list entries for deletion:
The Select All link in the status line will select all of the list elements currently showing on the page. Lists displaying Reading Groups, Annotations, Comments, or Users paginate after ten list items, so you will always only be selecting ten items with this option. Thus if you activate this option on the first list page you will be selecting items 1–10 in the list. If you activate this on the second page you will be selecting items 11–20 in the list. And so on. Selected items are indicated by the activated (read: checked) check boxes beside each list entry.
When the Select All option is activated—in addition to all entries on the page being selected—a new line will be added to the status statement. The new line shows the number of items currently selected for deletion and includes a clickable link that gives the administrator the ability to select all of the items in the list—not just those entries displaying on the current page.
If you choose to select all of the list items, the status line will now indicate that you have X number of Reading Groups or Annotations or Comments or Users selected, along with a new option to clear the selection. If you clear the selection, all of the list items are unselected and the list is returned to the state it was in after you first selected Bulk Actions.
Alternatively, when Bulk Actions is activated, you can choose specific list items for deletion by activating the check boxes beside their entries in the list. Check boxes can be selected with your mouse or by tabbing to the box using your keyboard and activating it with the space bar.
It is not possible to manually select items across pages; you can only manually select list items for deletion on the page you are viewing. Thus if your list of Reading Groups or Annotations or Comments or Users span across two pages, any selections from the first page would not persist when you navigated to the second page.
When you select Bulk Delete, either as part of the process to remove all of the entries in the list, or for a more tailored subset you’ve specifically chosen, the system will present a modal warning indicating the number of items you have selection for deletion and ask for confirmation to proceed.
When you opt to delete a Reading Group, Annotation, Comment or User, either individually or in bulk, the system will surface a warning in a modal pop-up asking you to confirm the deletion. As the prompt states, once the element has been deleted, there is no means to recover it. What is gone is gone.