This is a Key Topic, with high value for all users.

Groups and Users

IMOS recognizes two types of users for assigning access rights:

• Groups have group access rights. Groups can belong to other groups. A group acts as a template: Any group or user in a group inherits all the access rights of the group.

• Users have individual access rights. Users can belong to one or more groups, but they do not have to belong to any groups.

Users' overall access rights are a combination of their group and individual access rights.

Module Rights

Module Rights can be assigned at three different levels:

• Module: Trading, Chartering, Operations, Claims, Financials, Data Center, and Veslink. For each module, you can assign a right to the whole module or expand it.

• Area within a module: The headings from the module center (Quick Links, Reports, etc.) plus:

  • General/Module Center: The right to view the module center

  • Actions: Actions that might or might not correspond to a form or a list in a module center and go beyond the rights to Read, Write, and Delete. You can assign groups or users different rights to these actions than to the related form or list. Examples:

    • In Operations, deleting, closing, and reopening a voyage are listed under Actions. All these actions refer to the same form, the Voyage Manager, which is listed under Quick Links, as it is in the Operations module center. You might want to assign a group the Read and Write right to the Voyage Manager form, but only assign certain members the right to delete, close, or reopen a voyage.
      In other words, the rights to Voyage Manager will take precedence over the voyage-related Action rights.

    • In Financials, approving, posting, releasing, and reversing invoices are listed under Actions. Approve Invoices and Post Invoices, for the Approve Invoices List and Post Invoices List, are listed under Transactions, as they are in the Financials module center. You might want to assign a group or a user the Read Only right to the Approve Invoices List and the Post Invoices List, but not the right to approve, post, release, or reverse invoices. You also might want to allow certain users to approve or post invoices and others to reverse them.

• Item within an area, such as an action, a Quick Link, a form, a list, or a report

Data Center module rights may require other access rights to work in synch, e.g. to have public view on lists, a user needs to enable "Manage Public View Lists“ (Data Center) + "Voyage list“ (Operations).

Object Rights

Object Rights can be assigned at two different levels:

• By object type: Company, Vessel Type, Vessel, or Pool.
  You can assign a right to the whole object type or expand it. For example, you can assign a group or a user the same rights to all Vessel Types.
  
  With Company-based Security enabled (Enable Company Security), company-based permissions can be set for each user or group. Selecting an (empty) Company allows a user or group to edit and save records that do not have a Company specified. Additional options can be configured.

• By object: An individual company, vessel type, vessel, or pool.
  For example, you can assign a group or a user different rights to different vessel types.

Levels and Priorities of Rights

In the User Properties and Group Properties windows, each module or object name is preceded by a gray arrow ( ) or a black arrow ( ) and a check box ( ). Do any of the following:

• To assign a right, click a check box. To change to a different right, click again. Each time you click, the right changes.
  
  
  

  Open

  

  : No rights have been assigned here. But keep in mind that these rights for groups or users might have been assigned in any groups in which they are members.
  
  
  

  Open

  

  : Some rights have been assigned at a lower level. To see them, click

  to expand the item.
  
  
  

  : Read, Write, and Delete
  
  
  

  : Read and Write
  
  
  

  : Read Only
  
  
  

  : All Rights Denied

• To expand a level, click

  .

• To collapse a level, click

  .

• To see the legend that explains the rights, click Legend on either tab.
  
  

Priorities for Users with Conflicting Rights

Rights have priorities to determine which right applies if a user either has individual rights that conflict with group rights or is a member of more than one group, and the groups have different rights. The order is:

All Rights Denied > Read, Write, and Delete > Read and Write Only > Read Only

• A user with Read, Write, and Delete rights to a module who is also a member of a group with All Rights Denied to the module is effectively denied access.

• A user with Read, Write, and Delete rights to a module who is also a member of a group with Read Only rights effectively has Read, Write, and Delete rights.

Note: A user with a Read Only license has Read Only access regardless of membership in any other groups. 

However, please note that, unless explicitly denied, Read Only users should still have the ability to create/edit/delete analytical views of data as the Report Designer reports are not considered to be “data” but means to view the data.

Reporting on User Rights

You can create a Module Access Report in the Report Designer, which shows a summary of Module Rights by user; a similar report can be created for object rights. Download the example report definition from Example Reports - Report Designer.