We are currently the Dashboard version 7.7.03.

We are faced with the strategy of setting up dashboards for each area such as Accounting, Sales, Manufacturing, etc. At least that is the goal, a single dashboard for each area. From what I understand, the security of the Dashboard is based on the single group selected for the dashboard, multiple domains can be assigned to a group, and a user can have multiple groups assigned to him/her. In our case, there are sub groups in each area, for example, a sales general manager or sales manager would have access beyond the typical reports an inside sales representative would need. Via consultants we are using, they suggested setting up a dashboard for each area/department and then having tabs for each report. They said we could then restrict reports on certain tabs, which would be great, meaning we wouldn’t have to do a separate dashboard for managers and the other users in the department. I’m assuming this would be done through some customized coding (we are still getting the details). Is that a correct assumption? There isn’t some way to set this up directly within the dashboard or MRE is there? My guess is that something would have to be coded into each launch page, checking against MRE groups to see if the page needed to be redirected to some sort of “Access Denied” message. I’m not sure we’d want to go down the road of a lot of customized code to make the security work this way. Is that how it would be accomplished?

How do other companies handle this? Do they make a bunch of dashboard for example, one of sales managers and one for inside sales reps both in the sales department?

Are there any changes planned for how this will work in version 8?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

Get these concepts, Versions up thru 7.
Think of it like economics:
The Supply Side:
the Dashboard is made up of many Views
A View is a set of tabs, reports,etc.
And a a View is its own WORP directory
...
The Demand Side:
Users are assigned to Groups
Each Group has 1 View
A View is uniquely associated to a single Group.
A Group can have lots of domains assigned to it.
A Domain can be assigned to lots of groups; A Group can have lots of domains
...
A User can be assigned to lots of groups.
...
so the thing to do is have your MRE Repository be a big oracle database that gets updated every nite by a process that writes the user id and all the groups that user is allowed to see.
...
You can manage the Views, Groups, domains by hand using the MRE tool, but handling each user would make you nuts, so let it be a big batch job
Within any given View, the Users can see all the tabs (version 8 is sposed to change all that), so you can have extra security added to some particular reports that disallow users to see certain stuff, and present a message of sorts. Write yourselves a standard security checking module and -INCLUDE it for checking certain special situations.

In WebFOCUS 8, you assign groups access to a Portal (this can be one or more groups).

In a future service pack, you will be able to do page level security as well. So then you can build one Portal where the managers see an extra couple pages.

Now each piece of content itself is secured, so you could expose a page that has reports that only managers can see. The other users would get access denied, which is not a great experience and why we plan to add page level support.

It is also really easy for people to create their own pages in WF 8. So you could create the Portal with the pages everyone needs and just tell the Managers to create a new page with Report A, B, & C.

Regards,
Matthew

Is there an eta when 8 will be out?

Yes, the end of March.

Thank you!