Group
Digest
A Group is made up of one or more users with common permissions. Each user in the system must be given membership in one Group, and can be given membership to multiple Groups. Group role membership is passed on to the user, meaning that the user automatically belongs to any roles that are assigned to the group(s) that the user belongs to. This is a convenient and often preferred way to easily change role memberships across groups of users.Concept
More Insight on Groups
In Cascade, Groups are created and populated by Administrators or via a third-party authorization system (e.g. LDAP authentication). Because a Group is made up of one or more users with common permissions, placing multiple users into groups is a great way to customize permissions settings in the Cascade system. So if your organization is a university, for example, as an Administrator, it is your job to identify logical groups of users who should all have similar access rights and permissions based on your content contribution and management scheme. Let’s say you have 40 professors using Cascade only for managing course catalogs; logically, these users should more than likely be placed in the same group.In addition to providing a way of assigning roles to multiple users, the group also can be specified in the folder access rights interface, giving multiple users read and/or write access to folders and folder-contained assets.
Monitoring Groups (Administrators and Managers)
The Audit Trail is a tool for Administrators to see a summary of activities performed in the system by a particular user, group, role, or for the entire system. Selecting the audit trail for a group or roles will display the actions performed by all users belonging to that group or role. A date/time filter is provided as part of the Audit Trail view and is useful for filtering the results into a more specific timeframe.
The record for each event includes:
- the username of the user who performed the activity
- the time of the activity
- the type of action performed (login, edit, publish etc.)
- the information about that action (whether the asset was edited or published)
- the IP address of the computer from which the user logged in
- the asset type
- a link to the location of the particular asset
Technical
Creating a Group
Placing multiple users into groups is a great way to customize permissions in the system. Groups are managed in the Administration area.
To create a new group:
- Go to the Administration area and click the Users, Groups, & Roles tab on the left side navigation menu.
- Click New Group.
- On the General pane:
- Group Name -Type in a Name for the group
- Starting Page -This starting page will apply to all users set with this group as their default group.
- Base Folder - This base folder will apply to all users set with this group as their default group.
- Asset Factory Container - This Asset Factory Container will be used to populate "My Create Types" on the dashboard of all users set with this group as their default group.
- CSS Classes - Adding CSS classes here will limit the classes available to users set with this group as their default group.
- WYSIWYG Toolbar Options - Check the boxes for any types of WYSIWYG options you want to be made available to all users set with this group as their default group.
- Users - Select the users that should belong to the new group. Users may also be added to a group on the user level.
- Roles -If the role of the group is higher than that of a member user, that user's role will be promoted to that level.
- Click Submit to save your new group. Groups can be viewed, edited, or deleted by clicking on the group name in the Administration area and selecting the appropriate choices.
In addition, all group activity may be monitored by clicking on the group name in the Administration area and selecting Workflows or User Audit Trail.
Creating Groups as a Manager
When creating a group as a Manager, the new group will be pre-populated with the current manager user. Because managers can only view groups to which they belong, this ensures that groups don't "disappear" upon creation. If desired, a manager may remove him/herself from the group. In this case the group will no longer be visible to that user.
Monitoring Groups via Audits
The Audit Trail is accessible from the Administration area and gives a detailed account of all activity that has taken place within the system. The Audit Trail can be accessed for an individual user, a group, or a role. Simply click on the user, group, or role name in the Users, Groups, Roles section, and select the Audit Trail tab.
At the top of the Audit Trail are Start and End Dates with which you may filter results. Simply select a date range and click Filter. You may also filter results according to action type.
