Defining Role Access


One of the biggest favors you can do for your Contribute users is to restrict their access. The key reason for business users being hesitant to work on their Web sites is the fear of causing inadvertent damage; a secondary reason is the sense of being overwhelmed with too many choices. By editing a role's settings, you can target your users to work only on pages within their own department's portion of the site and to create pages only from their own templates.

In this exercise, you'll examine four related categories of the role settings dialog box: General, Folder/File Access, New Pages, and File Placement. After the settings are modified, you'll have a chance to experience the results. You'll start by creating a new role to be used by managers in the Human Resources department of Bounty General.

1.

In Contribute, choose Edit > Administer Websites > Design_Deploy. While in the Users and Roles category, click Create New Role. When the Create New Role dialog box opens, select Publisher from the "Create new role from copy of" area. Enter HR Manager as the name of the new role and click OK. When the Administer Website dialog box shows the new role, select Pat Publish and click Reassign. In the Reassign dialog box, choose HR Manager and click OK.

Because the Bounty General Web site is structured with departments in various folders, you can be very specific in role settings. As a follow-up to this exercise, you might want to create another role for HR Assistants based on the Writer role and customized to the Human Resources department.

2.

Select the newly added HR Manager role and click Edit Role Settings. In the General category of the Edit " HR Manager" Settings dialog box, keep the "Allow users to publish files" option checked. Change the Role Description text to read as follows:

Users in this role can create and edit pages in the HR department, and publish pages to the HR department's Web site.

Click Choose. When the Choose File on Website dialog box opens, expand first the site root and then the hr folder. Select the index.htm file and then click OK to return to the Edit "HR Manager" Settings dialog box.

Generally, all personnel on the manager level should have publishing privileges. Even if standard procedure is for their middle-level coworkers to handle the review and publishing chores for the department, managers will want to be able to publish material on their own. The description entered is used in various places within Contributenotably within email accompanying connection keysand should be specific enough so that people are sure they have the correct role.

By choosing a home page within their own department, users in this role get a jump start on their work. In the next category, you'll further limit their access to make sure that they stay within desired boundaries.

3.

In the Edit "HR Manager" Settings dialog box, click the Folder/File Access category. Choose "Only allow editing within these folders." Contribute alerts you that one of the file placement rules uses a folder where users can't publish pages and asks whether you want Contribute to add this folder automatically to the Folder/File Access list. Click OK. After Contribute adds the folder, click Add Folder. When the Choose Folder dialog box opens, double-click the hr folder in the site root. Click Select "hr" and leave the File Deletion option unchecked.

Restricting the folder access is important. This action prevents users in the HR Managers role from modifying files in other departments. The folder restriction is hierarchical in nature: All files and subfolders within the folder(s) you select are also editable.

You'll note that Contribute is aware of possible conflicts with the file placement choices when limiting access. In this case, the file placement option we set in an earlier lesson to handle Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files needs to be included here, too. By making the CSS folder accessible also, any templates with external CSS files will be handled properly.

4.

Switch to the New Pages category of the Edit "HR Manager" Settings dialog box. Deselect both the "Create a blank page" and "Use built-in starter pages" options. The option to create a new page by copying an existing one should be turned on. In the lower portion of the dialog box, make sure that "Use Dreamweaver templates" is checked, and select "Only show users these templates." Select the hr_newsletter entry in the Hidden Templates list and click Show.

Contribute is really not intended to be used as a tool to build Web pages from the ground up, particularly in an organizational setting. To keep the look and feel within a site consistent, you want users to create pages based on other pages within the site. For all roles, I recommend that you disable the option to create a blank page, as well as the one for using built-in starter pages. On the other hand, I prefer to enable the ability to copy existing pages on the site, particularly for managers. Although it is a bit of a risk because the user can create a page from those outside of the defined access area, there are times when sharing designs and concepts across the organi zation is useful.

Enabling only the template pertinent to the roleand therefore to the departmentgreatly simplifies the Web page creation process. An organization with even a moderately sized site is likely to have a fairly long list of templates. By winnowing the list down to just those used by a given department, you eliminate unnecessary and often overwhelming choices.

5.

Select the File Placement category in the Edit "HR Manager" Settings dialog box. Verify that only .css files are directed to a site-relative location, and that all other file types are placed next to the draft. Make sure the "Reject linked files (except images) that exceed max file size" option is unchecked. When you're done, click OK and close the Administer Website dialog box.

It's important to understand why no actual changes were implemented in the File Placement category. Because all external files except CSS files are already placed in the same folder as the draft (and eventually the final file), and CSS files have been expressly handled in the Folder/File Access category, all documents are being placed properly. Generally, file placement should be handled on a sitewide basis, with the same settings applied to all roles. This strategy allows Administrators to more easily locate and manage external files throughout the site.

The decision to limit the size of external files depends largely on the nature of the material used on the Web site. If your users tend to attach lengthy PDF or Flash documentsas many intranet pages doit's best to keep the restriction turned off.

Let's see what effects your role modifications have. Naturally, you'll need to change roles from Administrator to HR Manager first.

6.

Choose Edit > My Connections. In the My Connections dialog box, select the Publishing Services server entry and click Disable. Choose Enable. When the Log in to Publishing Services dialog box appears, enter ppublish in the Username field and publish in the Password field; click OK. After the Role in the My Connections dialog box changes to HR Manager, click Close.

To test the changes, first make sure that the HR Manager is in fact limited to editing pages within that department.

7.

If you have an open draft, choose Save for Later. Click Home Pages > Design_Deploy the index page for the HR department is displayed. To visit the home page of the PR department, change the Web address in the Location field of the browser from this:

http://[yourComputerName]/design_deploy_web/hr/index.htm

to this:

http://[yourComputerName]/design_deploy_web/pr/index.htm

The message bar indicates that you don't have permission to edit this page. Click Choose. Notice that only the two folders specified in the Folder/File Access category are showing. Double-click the hr folder entry and then double-click the info folder; select employee_records.htm and click OK. Click Edit Page. When the page opens, click Save for Later.

Verify that the options to create a new page are enabled properly.

8.

Click New Page. When the New Page dialog box opens, verify that only a single Dreamweaver template, hr_newsletter.htm, is available and that the options for creating a page from a blank page and Starter Pages are no longer present. Click Cancel to dismiss the New Page dialog box.



Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3(c) Training from the Source
Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3: Training from the Source
ISBN: 032128884X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 130
Authors: Joseph Lowery

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