Defining Security Profiles

Defining Security Profiles

OfficeTalk provides functionality for administering the security of data within your workgroup. Rather than granting and denying access to data on a per-user basis, OfficeTalk lets you define security profiles whose access to data may be fully specified. A security profile may then be assigned to one or more users. This gives you more control over the data security in your workgroup.

OfficeTalk provides four security options that will apply to most of the data in the workgroup. These are:

Security Option Description

Private Data marked as private may be seen and accessed only by the data's owner.

Personal Data marked as personal may be seen and accessed by the data's owner. The data may also be accessed by other users according to their general access to the data's owner.

Public Data marked as public is fully accessible by all members of the workgroup, however only the data's owner and any supervisors may change the access of this data.

Custom Data marked as custom will be accessible to users based on the customised settings.

The default security option for data, such as projects, planners, meetings, conversations etc. is personal. This means that, for most cases, the workgroup data security may be defined simply by defining the general access of security profiles to each user. For example, if you have read general access to a particular user then you will also have read access to all of that user's personal data. If you have visible general access to a user then you will be able to send mail and notifications to the user as well as inviting the user to meetings, however you will not have any access to any of that user's personal data.

The Access page in the property sheet of most data types lets you choose whether the item is private, personal or public. It also lets you specify, in more detail, the individual access of certain security profiles to the data.

Note: Only the data's owner or a supervisor will see an Access page in the property sheet of an item.

OfficeTalk provides a default security profile called 'Default Access'. All new users are initially assigned this security profile. In order to specify that some users may have access to certain data while other users may not, you must create additional security profiles and assign each user to the appropriate profile.

You can create a new security profile from Supervisor mode in the following way:

Click the right mouse button on Security Profiles in the left hand list and select New… from the context menu. The Security Profile property sheet is displayed.

Enter a name for the security profile, for example, 'Managers', 'Support Staff', 'CEO', etc. and press OK. The new security profile will appear in the right hand list and will be made available in the Access page of the User property sheet.

Security Option	Description
Private	Data marked as private may be seen and accessed only by the data's owner.
Personal	Data marked as personal may be seen and accessed by the data's owner. The data may also be accessed by other users according to their general access to the data's owner.
Public	Data marked as public is fully accessible by all members of the workgroup, however only the data's owner and any supervisors may change the access of this data.
Custom	Data marked as custom will be accessible to users based on the customised settings.