Authorization in Contact management

Authorization in the Contact management module comes in four different shapes.

• Page authorization
• Contact management privileges
• Advanced contact type and job title authorization
• Advanced selections and queries authorization

Page authorization

First, we have page authorization, where an employee’s group determines which pages the employee sees when they log in. This authorization is done in the authorization groups page (Contact management > Settings > Authorization groups). For each group, a selection of pages that can be accessed by members of the group can be made using checkboxes. By default, four groups are present in a freshly installed application, but these groups can be altered or deleted and new groups can be created.

Contact management privileges

The contact management privileges settings page (Contact management > Settings > Contact management privileges) controls the possibilities individual users of the Contact overview page (Contact management >Contact overview) have. There are three options for this setting: A, B and C.

Figure 1 Contact management privileges

A

If for an employee the A setting is selected, then this user can view all contacts and all contact persons. The employee cannot add, remove or modify any of the contact or contact person’s data. In the application, communication details can be created to record communication between an employee and a contact or contact person. In option A, all communication details are visible to the employee but only the ones that the logged in employee created themselves can be edited or removed. It is always possible to create new communication details.

B

Employees who have the B value can enter new contacts, contact persons and communication details as well as edit them. The only thing that is not allowed at privilege level B is the total removal of any of the contacts, any of the contact persons and other employee’s communication details

C

Employees with C value have no restrictions in using the functionality of the contact overview page.

Advanced contact type and job title authorization.

When advanced contact type and job title authorization is used, we can filter access to contacts and contact persons based on the group the logged in user is a member of. For this filtering to work we will have to connect contact types and job titles to the groups also.

Contact type authorization logic

Before the contact types are linked to groups we need to determine what a connection between a contact type and a group means when using the application. In the system settings page (Contact management > Settings > System settings) we can determine what logic is used. Connecting a group to a contact type is done by checking a checkbox in a matrix style page. For the setting “contact type authorization” we can choose between “checked means hide” and “checked means show”.

Figure 2 Contact type authorization page

Checked means hide

The effect of this setting is that for each checked combination of contact type and group, the contacts having this contact type will not be visible for employees in the selected group

When a contact has been assigned to multiple contact types and one of the contact types is checked for hiding for a certain group and other contact types are not, the contact will be invisible for employees in the group.

Checked means show

The effect of this setting is that for each checked combination of contact type and group the contacts having this contact type will be shown to employees in the selected group.

When a contact has been assigned to multiple contact types and one of the contact types is checked for showing to a group and other contact types are not, the contact will be shown to the employees in the group.

Connecting a contact type to a group is done in the contact type authorization page (Contact management > Admin extra > Contact type authorization).

Example: If we want only sales persons in our organization have access to the contacts we categorized as prospects we can connect the group “SALES” with the contact type “PROSPECTS” and give the “contact type authorization” the value “Checked means show”.

Job title authorization logic

Just like with the contact type authorization we have a system setting “job title authorization” in the system setting page (Contact management > Settings > System settings). For this setting, we can choose between “Checked means hide” and “Checked means show”.

Figure 3 Job title authorization page

Checked means hide

The effect of this setting is that for each checked combination of job title and group the contact persons having this job title will not be visible for employees in the selected group

When a contact person has been assigned to multiple job titles and one of the job titles is checked for hiding for a group and other job titles are not, the contact person will be invisible for employees in the group.

Checked means show

The effect of this setting is that for each checked combination of job title and group the contact persons having this job title will be shown to employees in the selected group

When a contact person has been assigned to multiple job titles and one of the job titles is checked for showing to a group and other job titles are not, the contact person will be shown to the employees in the group.

Connecting a job title to a group is done in the job title authorization page (Contact management > Admin extra > Job title authorization).

Example: If we only want senior management in our organization to have access to contact persons categorized as VIPs, we can connect all groups except “SENIOR_MANAGEMENT” with the “VIP” job title and give the “job title setting” the value “Checked means hide”

Advanced selection and query authorization.

When the selection and query filtering is enabled employees can only see and use selections or queries created by employees in the same group.

In the system settings page (Contact management > Settings > System settings) we can enable or disable the filtering on selections and queries by using the “filter selections and queries by group” checkbox.

When advanced selection and query authorization is used, there are two admin pages for administering the selections and queries.

Selection authorization

In this page (Contact management > Admin extra > Selection authorization) selections can be removed and selections can be moved from one group to another. There is also the option to use the “all groups” value for a selection making it available to all employees.

Figure 4 Selection authorization page

Query authorization

In this page (Contact management > Admin extra > Query authorization) queries can be removed and queries can be moved from one group to another. There is also the option to use the “all groups” value for a query making it available to all employees.

Figure 5 Query authorization page