Defining Roles

Ektron contains an Administrators User Group. Any user who is a member of that group automatically has full administrator privileges. The Roles feature lets you assign limited or specific administrator privileges to users who do not require full administrator privileges. For example, you can let certain users create, redirect, or remove tasks but deny them other privileges normally granted to administrators. See Also: Guidelines for Using the Folder-User Admin Role

The Permissions Table lets you control which users can manage a folder’s properties, its content, library items, and create or edit collections. (See Also: Managing Folder Permissions) Together, the Roles feature and the Permission Table enable you to assign administrative privileges to users who are not members of the Administrators group.

Best Practice 

When creating new user groups to use with roles, assign names as a mnemonic aid for the role, especially for folder-specific rules. For example, the Marketing Folder Admins user group could be used for all role members who administer the marketing folder.
Using the roles screens

Using the Roles Screens

Use the Roles screens to assign limited administrator privileges. To access the Roles screens, go to the Workarea and select Settings > Roles.

NOTE: In the Roles screens, you can select users or groups. However, you cannot select the Administrators group, because that group already has full permissions.

To view all roles assigned to any user, go to Workarea > Settings > Users. Then, select a user and click the Roles tab.

—Roles screen descriptions—

System-Wide Roles

Folder Specific Roles

  • Folder-User Admin—View and edit folder properties. These users can update properties, permissions, the approval chain, metadata, Web alerts, purge history, and so on. For example, create a user group and give it permission to manage the top-level marketing folder. Group members can do everything to that folder and its subfolders, but cannot manage other folders.See Also: Guidelines for Using a Custom Role and Managing Folder Permissions.
  • Move or Copy—Move or copy content. An Ektron best practice is to create a User Group for this purpose, then assign the group to this role. You should not assign the role to individual users. After assigning the User Group here, go to the folders whose content these users will be allowed to move or copy, and assign to that User Group at least Read Only and Traverse permissions. See Also: Managing Folder Permissions and Moving or Copying Content .
  • Custom Permissions—Used by a developer to extend Ektron's standard features. See Guidelines for Using a Custom Role.
Guidelines for using the Folder-User Admin role

Guidelines for Using the Folder-User Admin Role

When setting up users and groups for administrative access over folders, keep these guidelines in mind.

  • After being identified on the Manage Members for Role: Folder User Admin screen, users or groups must also be given at least Read-Only permission for individual folders on the Folder Properties > View Permissions for the Folder screen. See Also: Managing Folder Permissions
  • You must use the same identity on the Manage Members for Role: Folder User Admin and Folder properties screens. If a user group is listed for the role, use the same group when assigning folder permissions, not simply a group member. Conversely, if individual users are listed on the role screen, they must be specified in the folder permission.
  • Ektron strongly recommends adding only user groups to the Folder User Admin role, not individual users. If you set up an individual user as a role member, he could accidentally receive administrative rights to other folders.
Guidelines for using a custom role

Guidelines for Using a Custom Role

The custom permissions role lets your Web developer create a site page, and then restrict access to that page’s content (or areas with a page) to users assigned to a custom role.

Items you could show and hide could be as simple as a content block. But they could be more complicated, such as displaying buttons and fields for one user group, and something completely different for another.

Custom roles have no effect inside the workarea.

Examples of custom roles

Examples of Custom Roles

  • Most of your site visitors belong to different political parties, while some are not registered with any party. By checking the user’s ID against custom roles, you could present registered voters with selections for their party’s primary, and prevent unregistered voters from participating.
  • Your Ektron site visitors fall into 2 categories: suppliers and buyers. You could check the current user against a custom role and show buyers one set of data and suppliers a different set.
  • On your eCommerce site, registered students see a list of coupons that are not displayed for anyone else. Or, only registered adults can order age-controlled items, such as tobacco or alcohol.
  • Control your pages’ background colors, images, and skins based on custom roles. For example, mothers get family-oriented background images while teenagers get rock images and related styling.
Setting up a custom role

Setting up a Custom Role

  1. Set up user groups and add to them users who will have some level of access to the custom page. See Also: Creating a New User Group
  2. To continue the above example, create one group of auditors (who will have read-only access), and another group of administrators (who will have edit access).
  3. Create a folder to hold the content that will appear on the custom page. Use the folder’s permission table to assign users and groups appropriate access to the folder’s content. See Also: Managing Folder Permissions
  4. Go to Workarea > Settings > Roles > Custom Permissions.
  5. Click Add Custom Roles. The Manage Custom Roles screen appears.
  6. Enter a name for the custom role.
  7. Click Save. The Manage Custom Roles screen appears, displaying the new custom role.
  8. Click the name of the role you created. The Manage Members for Role screen appears.
  9. From the Show drop-down menu, select the type of users you want to add to the role.
  10. Click AddRole Member.
  11. Check the box next to the users or groups that you want to add to the role.
  12. Click Save. The Manage Members for Role screen appears.
  13. Your Web developer creates the custom page.
  14. You create content to appear on the custom page. Place the content in the folder you created in Step 2.
Information about custom roles for your developer

Information about Custom Roles for your Developer

The API provides 2 methods that determine if the current user is logged in, and if he is a member of the Administrators group. The methods let you test customizable roles with conditions outside the standard Is-Logged-In / Is-Admin tests.

API methods are listed below.

Method

Returns

GetRolePermissionSystem(RoleName

As String, nUserId As Long)

a Boolean value indicating if the user belongs to the system-wide custom role

GetRolePermissionFolder(RoleName

As String, nFolderId As Long, nUserId As Long)

a Boolean value indicating if the user belongs to the custom role for the given folder.

Administrator role privileges

Administrator Role Privileges

Administrator privileges include access to the screens that appear when you select Settings > Configuration.

Administrators can also

  • edit folder properties (including Web alerts, metadata, permissions, and the approval chain)
  • manage aliasing features, such as turn aliasing on or off, activate and deactivate manual aliases, and create automatic aliases
  • manually alias content
  • add, edit, or delete a calendar
  • add, edit, or delete a business rule
  • create, view, edit, and delete metadata definitions
  • create, view, edit, and delete taxonomies
  • create, redirect, and delete tasks
  • require a collection to go through an approval process
  • export content for translation to another language using XLIFF
  • run an eSync
  • access the eCommerce Module