I'm confused about permissions

Question

Hello again StackExchange Joomla experts. I recently wrote a post that asked how to make sense out of a 22-piece big band swing organization of which I am the director. My goal is to provide a personnel site in which a player is able to see only his/her charts (e.g. arrangements) for a given song. For example, Trumpet 1 should only be able to see Trumpet 1 charts, not everyone else's charts.

A kind gentleman responded to me and told me about Docman, and I have found this to be the tool that solved a lot of my issues.

In the 1st screen shot below, you can see that I've created a user called TromboneSub. TromboneSub's category is TromboneSub, and its parent is Trombone.

In the 2nd screen shot I have assigned TromboneSub's group memberships to "Registered" and "TromboneSub."

The 3rd screen shot shows that I have assigned the Trombone 1 part for the song "All of Me" to TromboneSub. Again, TromboneSub's group memberships are "Registered" and "TromboneSub."

(NOTE: The idea is that I may need a sub for Trombone 1, 2, 3 or 4, which is why the "All of Me" chart referenced in the screen shot is for Trombone1. TromboneSub should be able to see all trombone parts. What I am trying to accomplish here is to take the player's name out of the picture. If we need a trombone sub, we hire the person for the gig, then just pass him/her the account logon information so they can access the charts they need: In this case "All of Me" for Trombone 1. What I don't want is for TromboneSub to be able to see other charts for other instruments. I want to make it simple for subs to be able to long onto our personnel site as InstrumentSub to download the charts they need for their instrument.)

However, I guess I do not understand permissions very well. Unfortunately, when I log in as TromboneSub, I am able to see all of the arrangements, as you can see from the screen shot below. Ideally, TromboneSub should only be able to see the TromboneSub folder and the charts that are in it (e.g. Trombone 1, 2, 3, and 4.) The fact that TromboneSub can see AltoSax is not good!

Any ideas?

Answer 1

As I understand it, you want to add a score for each regular musician (Trombone 1, Trombone2, Trombone 3, Trombone 4, AltoSax1, AltoSax1, etc) So, when you upload a new score, you want to give access to the regular musician and a sub, hence the use of "Sub" as a group.

In the User Manager, your permissions are probably set up like the example below, so that everyone must be logged in and inherits the same permissions as Registered. This means that you have added these User Groups in the User Manager and set them up under "Register" as the parent category.

Registered Trombone TromboneSub Trombone2 Trombone2Sub

Since both Trombone and TromboneSub have the exact same content, you don't need the Sub group. You can just use 1 group per instrument.

Registered Trombone Trombone2 Trombone3 ...

When you assign access in eDocman, don't allow access on the Registered level, only the Trombone level. That way, they do not see all subcategories under "Registered" including all other instruments. Also, when you create a new user, only assign them to that user group, not Registered as well.

How the musician accesses your info after they log in: Now, when a user (musician) logs in, I like to redirect them to an Article that I can update quickly. For example, it can contain notices due to bad weather. It can also link to the scores, show "how to" pages for new musician orientation, etc.

To make that happen, 1) create the article in the Article Manager, 2) create a menu item - Add a new menu and call it "hidden menu" - Add a new menu item and select Articles/Single Article - then select your article. - Click Save. 3) Then, you can copy the Link and paste it in the Login Module located in Extensions/Modules.

Yes, they can just use the link from your main menu and only see their instrument for scores, but the method with a custom Article can automate more communications, far and beyond the scores.

See below a zip file that contains screenshots of: 1) Menu Item Link to copy and paste into a module 2) Login Module located in Extensions/Module Manager 3) Example of an article that goes way beyond 1 task. In this example, an admin can do what is needed to manage the entire site, including extensions like events and email blasts. In your case, you are posting scores and using it as a communication hub. Screenshots

Hope that helps!