You control access to content and features on your site using permission groups. A permission group is a query that returns a set of users based on defined criteria. Permission groups enable you to express your security needs in very rich ways. They simplify security management on your site. If a user's profile changes, their permission groups change too, which automatically updates what content they can see and which features they can access.
The following picture illustrates the concept of access permission groups.
To provide greater flexibility, you can include permission groups within permission groups to define its membership. The following graphic illustrates this concept:
You create permission groups using the following qualifiers:
Organization — When an account is created, each user is associated with an organization. You can build permission groups by identifying which organizations you want to include in it.
Organization Category — Your relationship with an organization directly affects the kind of information you want to exchange with them. For example, your channel partners might need access to sales and marketing collateral. While, your vendors might only need access to contact and billing information. In Click Extranet, you express your relationship with an organization using organization categories. Organization categories place organizations in your database into meaningful groups. You can build permission groups by identifying which organization categories you want to include in it.
User — If necessary, you can add individual users to your permission group.
User Role — Roles classify users with similar characteristics and responsibilities. Typically, roles are organized by job function, such as project manager, software engineer. However, roles can be customized for each different site, so you can use them however you want. Roles are created and managed by your site administrator. Each user can have multiple roles or no roles at all. You can build permission groups by identifying which roles you want to include in it.
IP Group — In some cases, you might want to grant access to content based on physical computer properties. To build a permission group based on computer properties, you can use IP Groups. IP Groups are defined lists of IP addresses that a site administrator creates using Click administration forms. You can build permission groups by identifying which IP Groups you want to include in it.
In addition to using each qualifier independently, you can also combine different qualifiers to create groups that include more complex conditions. For example, you can specify that anyone from a specific company, such as Click, Inc. who also performs a specific user role, such as Account Manager, should be part of a permission group.
The following picture illustrates how you would create a permission group using the Permissions Editor.
When building a custom group, all qualifiers work together to build a comprehensive profile of the users you want to include. Each piece of criteria you define for a custom group is combined with others using an "AND" condition. As such, all your criteria must be present in order for a user to be included in the custom group. For example, in the picture above, a permission group will be created as follows:
All users from Click who have the Account Manager user role will be added to the permission group. Users from Click who are not Account Managers won't.
To define permissions throughout your site, you can create multiple permissions groups and combine them using an "OR" condition. Each group you add is treated independently of another. Within a single group, all criteria must be present in order for a user to be added. However, between different groups, users must only meet criteria in one group or the other in order to be granted permissions.
To create custom groups from the Permissions Editor
From the Permissions Editor, click the Add Permissions button.
Click the Custom option to indicate you want to create a custom group.
If the Custom option is not available to you, you don't have appropriate permissions to perform this task. Talk to your site administrator about granting you the appropriate permissions.
Use the available qualifiers to select the criteria for your permission group. Click the Select button next to a qualifier to add it to your criteria.
When you're done, click OK.
The criteria you just specified is used to create a custom group.
Click OK again to close the Permissions Editor.