Maintaining Symbol Access Roles

Symbol access roles allow users with administrative permissions to create classes of symbol permissions that can be applied to individual users or to user groups. These classes of permissions are tailored to the roles that such users or user groups are likely to perform in the system. For example, users who deal with accounts in a particular country or department can be granted specific permissions to associated symbols that would enhance their ability to work with those areas, as opposed to the more general and limited permissions they would have otherwise.

Since symbol access roles are stored in the system, they can be applied to users and groups easily without requiring users with administrative permissions to reconfigure such permissions every time they are to be granted. It also makes the creation of a vast number of user groups for different roles and business units unnecessary. In this way, a particular user (or even several users) within a user group can have different permissions from the ones common to the group in general.

Default symbol access roles

A range of symbol access roles are provided with Longview and can be added by following the instructions in this chapter. The default symbol access roles that come with the application are the following:

Note: Access to all components is through the V3 Compatible Role; however, users requiring access to Longview Application Administrator need to have symbol access for the Administrator Role.

Creating new symbol access roles

To create a new symbol access role, follow these steps:

1. Open Longview Application Administrator.
2. Select File > New > Access Role. The New Access Role dialog opens.



3. Type a name for the new role. The name cannot contain spaces. This field is mandatory.
4. Type a description for the new role. The description can have up to 100 characters. This field is mandatory.
5. Click in the Access Type field to use the drop-down list to select the access type for each dimension. The types are:

   1. Full: Allows access to all symbols in the dimension.

   2. Restricted: Restricts access to the symbols you select.

   3. Fixed: Restricts access to the single symbol in the dimension you select.

6. If you select the Restricted or Fixed access type, click the symbol selector button that appears in the Symbols field. A selection dialog opens.



7. To add a symbol, select the check box for the appropriate symbol.
8. Specify the following settings for the selected symbol:

   1. Access: Either W (write access) or R (read-only access).

   2. Level:A number between 0 and 99 designating how many levels of child symbols below the selected symbol the users of the role have access to. This can only be set if the access type is Restricted.

   3. Priority: This is a number greater than zero to designating the precedence for the access type, where 1 is the highest priority. For example, if a user has Read access to a leaf symbol with a priority of 1 but Write access to that symbol’s parent with a priority of 50, the user will have Write access to all symbols under the parent except for that read-only leaf symbol.

      Note: Assigning a priority of 0 gives precedence to any other non-zero value.

   Note: If the dimension is set to Full access, these settings are not available.

9. Repeat step 7 to step 8 to add the required symbols.
10. When you have completed adding the symbols you want to include in this symbol access role for each dimension, click OK. The new role appears in the list of symbol access roles.

Modifying symbol access roles

To edit a symbol access role, follow these steps:

1. Open Longview Application Administrator.
2. In the Server Explorer pane, expand Symbol Access and select Roles. A list of the symbol access roles currently in the server appears in the Contents window.
3. Right-click the symbol access role you want to edit and select Properties. The Properties dialog opens for the selected role.

   

4. Make the necessary changes to the properties of the symbol access role and click OK. Your changes to the role are saved.

Deleting symbol access roles

Note: You can delete symbol access roles that have been created by users in your system only. It is not possible to delete core symbol access roles.

To delete a symbol access role, follow these steps:

1. Open Longview Application Administrator.
2. In the Server Explorer pane, expand Symbol Access, and select Roles. A list of the symbol access roles currently in the server appears in the Contents window.
3. Right-click the symbol access role you want to delete and select Delete. A confirmation dialog opens.

   Caution: If you delete a symbol access role, it cannot be recovered. To restore a deleted symbol access role to the system, it must be recreated. Use this function with caution.

4. Click Yes. The role is removed from the list of symbol access roles.

Applying symbol access roles

Symbol access roles can be applied at either the group or user level. When applied to a group, all users in that group inherit the access role (or those from the role you provide to the group). When applied to a user, that user alone inherits the access role (though the role may be applied to multiple users in a group on an individual basis as well).

Applying a symbol access role to a group

To assign symbol access to a group, follow these steps:

1. Open Longview Application Administrator.
2. In the Server Explorer pane, expand Symbol Access > Users and Groups and select Groups. A list of the groups residing on the server appears in the Contents window.
3. Right-click the group you want to work with and select Properties. The Symbol Access Properties dialog opens for the selected group.

   

4. Click in the Access column to use the symbol selector button ( ... ) to open the symbol selection dialog for that role. A selection dialog opens for the selected access role.

   

5. Locate the symbol for which you want to give access to the group and double-click it. The symbol appears to the right.
6. Make changes to the Access, Level, and Priority fields as needed. For more information on these fields, see step 6 of Creating New Symbol Access Roles.
7. If you want the group to inherit symbol access from the selected role for the dimension, select Inherit Role Access.
8. Click OK. The applied symbol access appears in the Access column for the selected role.
9. Repeat step 4 to step 8 for each role for which you want to apply symbol access.
10. When you have finished applying symbol access, click OK.

Applying a symbol access role to a user

To assign symbol access to a user, follow these steps:

1. Open Longview Application Administrator.
2. In the Server Explorer pane, expand Symbol Access > Users and Groups and select Users. A list of the groups residing on the server appears in the Contents window.
3. Right-click the user you want to work with and select Properties. The Symbol Access Properties dialog opens for the selected user.

   

4. Click in the Access column to use the symbol selector button ( ... ) to open the symbol selection dialog for that role. A selection dialog opens for the selected access role.

   

5. Locate the symbol for which you want to give access to the user and double-click it. The symbol appears to the right.
6. Make changes to the Access, Level, and Priority fields as needed. For more information on these fields, see step 6 of Creating New Symbol Access Roles.
7. If you want the use to inherit symbol access from the selected role for the dimension, select Inherit Role Access.
8. Click OK. The applied symbol access appears in the Access column for the selected role
9. Repeat step 4 to step 8 for each role for which you want to apply symbol access.
10. When you have finished applying symbol access, click OK.