Roles

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Introduction A Role is a collection of rights that allow a user to perform particular actions in Hornbill. Hornbill comes equipped with a range of roles ready to associate to your Users. With each App that's installed, the number of roles available to associate to your users increases as each App is delivered with a set of default roles specifically designed to govern access to that application. In order for Users to access various parts of Hornbill they need to be given the appropriate roles. This is done using Hornbill Administration.

Related Articles Collaboration Roles Document Manager Roles Service Manager Roles IT Operations Management Roles

Associating Roles to Users

Who can associate Security Roles to Users?

Hornbill is designed to only allow the association of roles if the User who is performing the assignment of a particular role already possess the same system/application rights among the roles that they themselves possess. The "Admin" user account (which possesses the Super User Role) is exempt from this rule and has the ability to assign any role to any other user, therefore it is advised that you use this account (or another Super User Account) to allocate roles to the rest of the Users.

Where do I associate Roles to Users?

Roles are managed in Hornbill Administration and can be associated to a User in two ways:

• Navigate to a specific User Account and select and save roles in the "Roles" field.
• Navigate to a specific role and click on the "Assigned Users" tab. Associate more users to this role by clicking the "Add Users" button.

What Roles should I Associate?

Role Types: Security Vs Assignment Roles

Two types of Role exist within Hornbill, Security Roles and Assignment Roles:

• Security Roles - Are used to control access to the different Hornbill Applications and also to the different areas within each application. Security roles posses a "Privilege Level" which affects whether they can be given to a basic user or full user.
• Assignment Roles - As the name suggests, are primarily there to provide restrictions on the assignment of Activities. For example, when configuring a Human Task node within a Business process, it is possible to assign that task to a Role. This is especially useful if you wish to restrict the assignment of an activity to a number of Users within a particular Group (but not all users) or if you want to expose this activity to a selection of Users across multiple Groups.

It is also possible to share certain items based on an assignment Role. One example is Dashboards.
Assignment Roles can only be associated to "Application Users"

When viewing the list of roles, the type can be quickly identified by the symbol next to the role name. Hovering your cursor over the symbol will confirm this by way of a tool-tip.

Getting Started with Application Users

All application Users must have the Collaboration Role associated to their User Account. In addition to this, they will have a range of other roles depending on which applications they will need to access and the duties they will be carrying out within those applications.

• Service Manager Roles
• Document Manager Roles
• Live Chat Roles

Getting Started with Basic Users

All Basic Users must have the Basic User Role associated to their User Accounts.

In addition to this, they will have a range of other roles depending on what content they will be required to consume in the Hornbill Service Portal:

i.e. Basic User Role (Mandatory)
+ Self Service User - provides Service Manager functionality via the Service Portal
+ Docmanager Portal - provides Document Manager functionality via the Service Portal
+ Portal Chat Session User - provides Live Chat functionality via the Service Portal
and so on.

Generally speaking, where an application is capable of delivering content via the Hornbill Service Portal, there will be a role controlling whether the content will be available to a Basic User.
NOTE: A Basic User account cannot posses a role which has a privilege level higher than "basic". Basic Users cannot be given assignment roles.

Custom Roles

In the unlikely event that the range of System Roles supplied with Hornbill do not cater for your specific needs, it is possible to create your own Security and Assignment Roles.
Creating a new Assignment role is very simple and straightforward.
However, creating a custom security role is quite an advanced task as it potentially requires becoming familiar with Hornbill's API documentation found at https://api.hornbill.com/docs/ in order to specify the correct system rights and database table access against the role.

Creating a Custom Role

1. Launch Hornbill Administration
2. Select which application you are interested in the selection box at the top left
3. Select Roles then Roles
4. Select '+ Create New Role'
5. Specify the type of the new role
6. Complete Role details...

• Role ID - Name of new role. It must be unique.
• Privilege Level - For most roles this will be User
• Applications - Can apply to one or more Apps that will use this role
• Groups = Please leave blank
• Shared Mailboxes = Name of required mailbox (optional - a mailbox is only required if the role is intended to manage access to a Hornbill Shared Mailbox).

6. Click "Create Role" to Save

Here is an example of a new role definition:

Modifying a Custom Role

1. Launch Hornbill Administration
2. Select which application you are interested in the selection box at the top left
3. Select Roles then Roles
4. Select the role that needs changing
5. Edit the details and then 'Save Changes'

- You can't change the Role ID once a role has been set up

Deleting a Custom Role

1. Launch Hornbill Administration
2. Select which application you are interested in the selection box at the top left
3. Select Roles then Roles
4. Mark the check box for role that needs deleting
5. Using the drop-down menu next to the '+ Create New Role' button, click 'delete selected'and confirm.