Permission denied – How roles and permissions work in aC 1.0
There are three roles that a user could have in activeCollab 0.7.1:
- Owner company member with administration permissions
- Owner company member without administration permissions
- Members of client companies
While this setup would do the trick in most situations, it wasn’t flexible enough and created problems in some situations, especially to people who wanted to let their clients create projects or had contractors on board. In order to address these issues, we made a more flexible roles and permissions system in activeCollab 1.0.
Here is a part of the “Roles” chapter from the “activeCollab 1.0 User Manual”. Please note that this is an early draft of the User Manual and that it might change by the time we launch.
There are two groups of users in any activeCollab setup:
- Members of owner company
- Members of client companies
Any member of the “owner company” has a role he or she plays in the system. By default activeCollab ships with four predefined roles:
- Administrator
- Project manager
- Contractor
- Company member
Every role has its own set of permissions. For instance, project managers don’t require access to administration but they certainly need to be able to start new projects and manage existing ones. On the other hand, members and contractors are just involved in the project. They don't do any project management or administration so they don't require those permissions.
You are not limited to predefined roles. Setting up and managing roles is easy thanks to the role management tool in the administration section. The roles management tool lets you define new roles, see who has specific roles, alter them.
Note: In order to make the delete option available there must not be any members with that role assigned.
Clients have a simpified role system.
- Company manager
- Member
Every client company needs to have at least a company manager. The manager has some extra permissions, for example he or she can alter company details and manage accounts of other members. If the client company logo changes or one of their members changes his or her email address they can handle the change themselves without the need to contact your stuff and distract them from their regular duties.
The number of users the client company manager can create is limited with the "Max. members" property. It can also be set to 0 in order to remove any limitations (the manager will be able to add as many users as needed).
Note: If you decide to let your clients create new projects in the system you just need to open - Administration / Settings / General settings, and make sure that the option "Let clients start new projects" is enabled.
While roles define permissions on a system level there are also project level permissions that let you specify what users can and cannot do per project – giving you more flexibility when needed.
So, now you know how roles and permissions work. We dare you to find a flaw in the system! Remember, if you do “crack the code” – let us know!
Comments:
This is a problem I run into since I try to organize some of my personal hobby projects with activeCollab. Sometimes I want to have a friend be able to manage things if I am working on a project with them. Only being able to achieve that through giving them administrator privileges has not worked since I would loose the privacy on my other projects.
Problem solved!
you guys rock!
i hope i can wait for 1.0
Thx
and how I can get the 1.0 version?
Is there any way to get a beta (I saw it’s closed) version?
Thank you
Unfortunately, the beta has been closed due to the large number of applications (which we need to go through), but never say never. Feel free to send an e-mail describing yourself and your organization, so the least we could to is add you to the waiting list.
Is it possible to have svn-access to v1?
Project level permissions work pretty much the same as in activeCollab 0.7.1, but there are more permissions now and plugins can define their own.
Every project have its own set of permissions. You can set per user what he or she can access or do. For example, you can say that Peter from Company A can enter hours while Susan from the same company cannot.
I’ll see to find something interesting :)
@James:
Sorry, we don’t have a release date set and we don’t plan to announce any. We’ll simply release 1.0 when it gets ready (during the summer).
Or maybe the manager of one Company and the client on another one?
Great work. Thanks.
There is one simple rule – user can be member of only one company, because of that he or she can be manager of only one company.
Thanks,
Alex
You will be informed when your beta account gets ready via email. If you would like to cancel your beta application please email me at ilija.studen@gmail.com.
Have fun!
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todd
2007-06-06 10:56