4.12. Permissions and Privileges

A privilege is the ability to perform specific actions, such as create, edit, delete, or preview, on the different objects in the CMS. Privileges are pre-defined and cannot be modified. You can only add new privileges to the CMS programmatically.

Permissions are when you assign privileges to users, either individually, through their pre-defined groups, or through their roles. If you do not assign users any privileges, then they cannot do anything within the CMS except receive email alerts.

You can set permissions for the roles you define or the predefined roles at the content section level. You can also set permissions on a folder that are different from the global permissions on the content section. By inheritance, the items and folders within a folder you set permissions for will have the same permissions as that folder. So, if you specify that only a particular group can create items within a folder, that restriction will hold true for all folders within that folder as well.

The CMS includes the following privileges:

• Item Administration

  Lets users create, modify, and delete roles, workflows, lifecycles, categories, and content types. You should assign item administration privileges to other administrators only. This helps preserve the integrity and security of the CMS.

• Apply Alternate Workflows

  Lets users assign a different workflow to the content item.

• Categorize Items

  Lets users assign items to the appropriate category within the CMS.

• Create New Items

  Typically assigned to the Author role, lets users create new content items.

• Delete Items

  Lets users remove content items from the content section, as long as they are not live (actively published).

• Edit Items

  Lets users modify existing content items.

• Preview Items

  Lets users see what the published item will look like when it is deployed to the server, while there is still time to make any necessary changes.

• Publish Items

  Lets users publish and unpublish content items by applying lifecycles. The Deploy task must be finished before the Lifecycle information is displayed on the Publishing tab.

• View Published Items

  Typically assigned to users who have a Viewer Role (the audience), lets users see the published content items.

While there is no required order for entering information into the CMS, you must set permissions for users and roles before they can modify content items.

For more information, refer to Section 4.17 Users, Groups, and Roles.