SharePoint Portal Server uses role-based security to control access to content, regardless of whether the user is accessing content by using a Web browser, Web folders, or a Microsoft Office application. SharePoint Portal Server uses a fixed set of three roles to offer a flexible and secure method for controlling user access to content. You cannot modify the permissions associated with a specific role. Although you can assign roles at the top level of the workspace, you generally assign roles on folders in the workspace. In addition, you can completely deny a user or group access to a specific document.
You cannot specify security from the dashboard site.
The role-based security model provided with SharePoint Portal Server allows you to customize access to content for viewing on the dashboard site. For more information about role-based security in SharePoint Portal Server, see Chapter 8, Planning Security.
Only users who are authors or coordinators on the Dashboards folder can create new personal dashboards. A coordinator at the workspace level must change the assigned roles for users on this folder if they are not already authors or coordinators.
If, as a workspace coordinator, you want to allow several people in the organization to create personal dashboards, it is recommended that you assign roles that use domain groups rather than individuals. For example, if you want everybody in your organization to have the ability to create a personal dashboard, you could add the Windows 2000 Everyone group to the Dashboards folder and assign the author role to that group.
By default, the Dashboards folder does not inherit security settings from the workspace. As a result, to allow users to create or modify personal dashboards, you must assign the user an appropriate role to the Dashboards folder.