Latest revision as of 11:37, 27 February 2023

Overview

User Roles are a key feature of SmartSimple: they are defined in the system by System Administrators to categorize users and to provide the basis for setting Role Based Security permissions. The majority of your configuration needs will be using role-based security settings. 

The Key Control Element - Roles

Roles have the ability to control the following features within your SmartSimple system: 

• The Administration Interface menu - the menu items displayed in the administrative interface are controlled by the user role. Some users will see different menu items than other users, depending on their allocated role. 
• Portal Interface - you can create a specific portal view for people in a specific role, overriding the display of the administrative interface.
• Role Based Custom Fields - you can gather different information for different roles through role-specific custom fields. 
• Manager Permissions - manager permissions in all applications and key features are associated with specific roles. These Manager permissions will give them higher levels of access and functionality to that feature than other user roles. 
• Role Permissions - permission a role to be able to set other roles. For example, a sales role may be able to change a Suspect role to a Prospect role, but not a Customer or Employee role. 
• Associations - When you use the Associations feature to associate a contact with an organization to which they are not a contact, you use a role to show the relationship between the organization and the person. 
• Within s, roles are used to define a context-specific role for a person - for example, a customer may be playing the role of Project Leader, but only for a specific project. Even more commonly, a Staff Role might have administrative permissions to a specific only. See UTA role for more information about roles that are permissioned for UTA-only. 
• Workflows Overview - you are able to reference the role in a collaborative workflow step; for instance, you can specify that everyone with the Executive Role would need to approve a document before the system can forward its distribution. 

Notes on Roles

Prior to adding many users to SmartSimple, it is important to define roles: 

• You can define any number of roles.
• You can associate a single user with any number of roles.
• It is recommended for security reasons that only a System Administrator can define roles.
• Once a role is created, the administrator associates users with those roles. 

Always make sure that the role is defined prior to Importing Users or adding users via Auto Loader. Both methods provide features that will prompt you to select one or more roles for the users that you are uploading.

The Everyone Role

A single, important, built-in role is the Everyone role. Every contact will be a member of the Everyone role regardless of the other roles that are created and assigned to them. You are able to set a menu for the Everyone role, but unlike the other roles, you cannot create a portal for everyone, or provide access to reports to the Everyone role. 

• Leaving permissions blank anywhere (excluding the Security Matrix will presume View and Edit access for everyone, provided there is no Status Lock in place).
• If there are Status Locks in place, the default for any user would be View access, unless they have Override Lock enabled (e.g. the System Administrator). 

Configuration - Essentials

Accessing Roles

To access the list of roles available in your copy of SmartSimple, follow these steps:

1. Click on the 9-square menu icon on the top right of your page.

2. Under the heading Configuration, select Roles and Security.

4. Click on the hyperlink for User Roles.

5. A list of roles available to the system will be displayed; if you want to edit a role, click the pencil icon next to the name of the role. To create a new role, click the New button (+ icon). 

Creating a Role

There are only two fields that need to be defined in order to create a role: the name of the role and a narrative description. 

However, it is best practice to fill out as many of the fields as possible, with as much explanatory detail as possible. Role settings are described below: 

Once you are done filling out the general edit fields for creating a new user role, click the Save button at the bottom.

When a user is added to a role, the role will be visible on the role list of that user's profile.

Permissioning Roles

Clicking into the second tab of the New Role page will display the permissions for that role.

Menu Settings for Roles

When you Edit an existing role, or after you create and Save a new role, the page will reload and display a left hand menu that gives you access to different features of the role.

Remove or Add from Current Users

You are also able to Add or Remove users in bulk when you access the Current Users section of the role's Edit Page, using the Add User button.

1. Click into the Current Users tab from the left hand side menu. The list of current users, if any, are displayed.

2. Click the + icon on the top left that will allow you to add new users to this role. 

3. The Add User to Role screen will launch, with Search options including the ability to select certain roles as the results of the search. 

• Tip: If this is a brand new instance, there may be no users in any role - in that case change the role field in the search options to No Role Assigned.

4. Select all of the users that you would like to associate with this role.

5. Click the Add button. 

To Remove Users from a Current Role, simply go to the list of current users and select the names of the users who you would like to remove from the role. Once at least one user is selected, new buttons will appear at the top of the list that give you the ability to remove users. 

Click Yes when the confirmation message appears if you are certain that you want to remove the selected user(s) from the role.  

See Also

• User
• Roles and Security Settings
• Security Matrix