WEBDEV Concepts

Part 4: Advanced concepts 127 User Groupware in practice 1 Overview In an Intranet or Internet site, it is necessary to define the role of the different contributors. Several access levels can be defined according to the user. All users have different responsibilities and requirements. Their field of action must therefore be more or less limited. Let’s take a simple example: a sales management application that offers the following features: • View prices, • Modify prices, • Enter orders, • Enter customers. Access may vary according to the user. For example: • administrative assistants can see the price list and create orders. • sales representatives can see the price list, place orders and create new customers. • sales directors have access to all options. To manage these access levels in your WEBDEV sites, all you have to do is include the User Groupware in your site. In just a few clicks, a standard application can be transformed into an application that manages several access levels. This feature can be easily implemented. When running the site, the manager will be able to create users (identified by their username and password) and give them access to some of the site features. Remark : The User Groupware is available in dynamic WEBDEV sites running on Windows or Linux. The User Groupware is not available in static, PHP, AWP or Ajax sites. 2 How does User Groupware work? A site that uses the User Groupware has two levels of use: • user level. • supervisor level. 2.1 User level The user logs in to the application via a login page and only has access to some features. Remark: You can also log in using an LDAP directory. 2.2 Supervisor level The supervisor logs in to the application via a login page and accesses an advanced menu to configure users and their rights, or to start the application. The advanced menu allows the supervisor to: • start the site. • configure the groupware. Configuring the groupware consists in creating and associating users and groups, and managing the rights granted to each user (or group) on each page of the site. Rights can be defined for menu options, groups of controls and controls. The supervisor can gray out these elements, make them inactive or invisible. These configurations take precedence over any configuration defined in the program. For more details on how the supervisor can configure the groupware, see "Configuring a site that uses the standard user groupware", page 131. Remark : All user information and rights are stored in HFSQL data files.