Approving Themes

[panderson]

We have recently gone to only allow extensions that we have approved.  It seems that it also blocks the ability for users to use the Themes in the Chrome Webstore without us going in and approving each  individual theme, is there any way to approve categories or some other way of getting themes available without manually having to go in and add each one. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[kaned]

I think Themes are considered an extension.  I do not know of a way to approve just those types of extensions.

I know that there were several schools in my immediate area that had issues with themes on student devices.  Some of them caused them to run slow, sluggish, and crash.  They ended up no longer approving themes as it because hard to vet which themes worked or didn't.

YMMV but we do not allow themes for students and are considering the same for staff.  Haven't made that leap as of yet.

[panderson]

Thanks, that's good info to know. Hearing that, I probably won't add them for students and with that only sparingly allow them for staff.

[panderson]

So I went in and disabled the ability for staff and students to only allow apps and extensions that have been approved and to be able to request extensions, but now the users go to the webstore all they can see is the apps that have been approved, they can't search the store to see them in order to be able to request them.  I can't seem to find any settings that would be causing this isssue, if they are allowed to request and extension, one would guess they could look for it.  Any ideas on what I am missing?

[panderson]

I did find that if I search for an extension, that it will then list all the available extensions, if I search for the letter "A" it will pull up lots of extensions (can keep clicking "Load More").  We just can't click and search on the categories and see anything that hasn't already been approved.

[kaned]

I think if you know the extension or google search the extension you can find it, but I don't think it wants users searching for unapproved items.  I could definitely see that we would want staff to search for unapproved items and make a request to unblock that item.  That being said, I certainly would not want students to be making those requests.

I have not yet looked, but I'm not aware of a setting to change this behaviour (as of yet).

[Kim_Nilsson]

We block everything not pre-approved. Never had anyone ask for themes.

We also have a separate process for requesting access to new apps, services and extensions, which all have to abide by data privacy rules, so nothing gets approved without a GDPR process.

[panderson]

Our theme's issue is because we allowed staff to install extensions without being approved, we have now changed to Block and only Allow Approved. But some of our staff had added the themes when they could, so now they are being blocked.