Security & Permissions Overview
Security is extremely useful on your intranet, because it allows you to automatically control who can see or alter content on your site or parts of your intranet. User/Group rights are permissions for intranet content or actions.
Best practice is to use Group rights rather than User rights - even if you have to create a new group of one. This allows you to more efficiently manage various permissions throughout the intranet as staff roles change and staff members move on. Note that when a user has both individual rights as well as group rights, the individual user rights will always take priority.
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Elevated User Rights
Elevated Rights are assigned to specific logins or individuals. Some elevated rights affect actions across the entire intranet, and some are more specific to various areas of the intranet.
Types of Elevated Rights:
- Super Admin - Super Admins have unrestricted access and administrative rights and can impersonate other users.
- Administrator - Administrators have the same rights as Super Admins except they can’t assign/edit Super Admins, impersonate users, plus a few other restrictions.
- Site Owner - Site Owners have management rights over their sites, including the option to create navigation, plug in applications, and add widgets to the site’s home page (note that this is different than the main intranet home page).
- Page Owner - Page Owners have limited access to the Admin section to manage their assigned page(s). They have full ownership of their pages and the content within them. However, they cannot edit the left Site Navigation column; site owners can do it.
- Application Owner - Application Owners have limited access to the Admin section to manage their assigned Application(s). They have full ownership of their Apps and the published content.
- Folder Owner - Folder Owners have access to manage their assigned folder(s), with full ownership of the folder and its contents.
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Group Rights
Group permissions are a very effective and recommended way of managing permissions, allowing administrators to ensure permissions-based functions will continue to be performed regardless of vacations or staff turnover.
For example, imagine if several employees from different departments were collectively responsible for updating content in 10 places on your intranet. If you assigned permissions by person, you would have to go to 10 different intranet places to update, and would have to repeat this process each time an employee left or was added. To save time, create a well-named group which contains all the necessary users, then assign the required security permissions to this group once (in all required locations). If a new user joins the group, simply add them to the group and all permissions will be automatically granted to them. Note that user permissions will always override group permissions.
Types of Group Rights:
- Super Admin - Super Admins have unrestricted access and administrative rights and can impersonate other users.
- Administrator - Administrators have the same rights as Super Admins except they can’t assign/edit Super Admins, impersonate users, plus a few other restrictions.
- Site Owner - Site Owners have management rights over their sites, including the option to create navigation, plug in applications, and add widgets to the site’s home page (note that this is different than the main intranet home page).
- Page Owner - Page Owners have limited access to the Admin section to manage their assigned page(s). They have full ownership of their pages and the content within them.
- Application Owner - Application Owners have limited access to the Admin section to manage their assigned Application(s). They have full ownership of their Apps and the published content.
- Folder Owner - Folder Owners have access to manage their assigned folder(s), with full ownership of the folder and its contents.
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App Security
There are two key ways to modify the security for Apps: folders (sometimes called categories depending on the App) and owners.
Folder security allows you to get very specific about which users or groups can view, add, edit, or delete content. App Owners have full rights to view, add, edit and delete any content within the App, and can also perform some Admin functions such as creating categories and assigning user/group permissions.
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Site Security
There are two key ways to modify the security for Sites: access and owners.
Site access translates to which users can see that the Site exists in the navigation and see the Site content. Site Owners have full rights to view, add, edit and delete any content within the Site, and can also perform some Admin functions such as creating navigation and managing or securing Pages.
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Page Security
Security for Pages can be managed by assigning Page Owners. Page Owners have full rights to view, add, edit and delete any content on the Page, and can also manage Pages and any associated Sub Pages. This is a more restrictive level of security than Site Security, since Sites can have many Pages.