Users and roles management

In the Administration Console, you can set up and control access to specific parts of Dimensions CM.

Users, Groups, Roles and Privileges area

The Users, Groups, Roles and Privileges area of the Administration Console contains sections for defining users and user groups, setting up roles and privileges, and assigning them to users and/or groups.

Dimensions CM uses this information to ensure that only those who have the authorized roles or privileges can perform specified actions on a particular part of the product.

The Users, Groups, Roles and Privileges area includes the following sections:

Section	Description
User & Group registration	Add user accounts and groups, modify existing users and groups, and assign attributes to users. See Manage users and groups.
Role definitions	Add new roles and modify existing ones. See Define roles.
Role assignments	Assign roles to users and modify existing role assignments: by user, by role, or by design part. See Assign roles.
Privileges	Grant or deny privileges to users, groups, or roles, according to specified rules. See Manage privileges.
Mail events	Subscribe users or groups to receive email notifications when certain events occur. See Subscribe users to mail events.
User interface profiles	Define and assign profiles to users, to determine which features are visible in the clients. See Define and assign profiles.

For an overview of the user interface, see Users, Groups, Roles and Privileges area.

Dimensions CM user types

The following types of users exist in Dimensions CM:

Type	Description
Normal	A user who has normal access to Dimensions CM. To create this type of user, add a new user.
Auto Registered (Proxy)	A user who has limited access to Dimensions CM. This type of user is created when an unregistered user logs in to Dimensions CM. You can promote a proxy user to a normal user account. The Proxy User Login feature controls the ability for an unregistered user to log in to Dimensions CM. It can be enabled by the Admin group. Proxy Login is enabled by creating a new account with the reserved word "*" (asterisk) as the user login name, and is disabled by deregistering this special user. For details, see Administration.
Dormant	An inactive user who has been deleted from Dimensions CM. You can still view details about a dormant user.

Type

Description

Normal

A user who has normal access to Dimensions CM. To create this type of user, add a new user.

Auto Registered (Proxy)

A user who has limited access to Dimensions CM. This type of user is created when an unregistered user logs in to Dimensions CM. You can promote a proxy user to a normal user account.

The Proxy User Login feature controls the ability for an unregistered user to log in to Dimensions CM. It can be enabled by the Admin group. Proxy Login is enabled by creating a new account with the reserved word "*" (asterisk) as the user login name, and is disabled by deregistering this special user.

For details, see Administration.

Dormant

An inactive user who has been deleted from Dimensions CM. You can still view details about a dormant user.

User groups

A group is a set of users to which you can assign a privilege, thus assigning that privilege to all the users that belong to that group.

Groups provide a manageable way of granting and denying privileges. For example, you could create a group called DEVELOPMENT, and assign users USER1, USER2, and USER3 to that group. You could then grant to that group the privileges to create, browse, and update items, thus giving these abilities to USER1, USER2, and USER3.

The ADMIN group

When you first install Dimensions CM, a group called ADMIN is already defined. This group is set up for administration purposes and has the necessary privileges for performing administration tasks such as creating users and granting privileges to them.

Privileges

A privilege is the ability to perform a certain operation on a particular class of object, for example, to create a project/stream or to action an item.

It can also be the ability to perform a general administrative function, such as to manage lifecycles or privileges. A privilege can be granted to a user, a group, or a role, or be made to apply generally to any user or under particular rules.

For an overview of privileges and roles, see Privileges and roles.

For a description of available privileges, see Privilege reference.

Roles

Use roles to determine:

Who can action an object from one particular state to another in its lifecycle. This is done by assigning a role to a lifecycle transition for an object type. For details, see Manage transitions.
Which users can work on a particular product segment. Roles can be assigned to users at Product or Design Part level, but can also be assigned to a specific design part variant and/or project/stream. When you assign users to a role on a design part for example, this assignment allows those users to work on the objects associated with that design part.

After defining a role, you can assign it to a user or a group, thus controlling which users can perform specific operations on the Dimensions CM objects in a product. This distinguishes roles from privileges. Privileges determine which users can perform specified operations on particular object classes within the product as a whole.