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Guidelines for Setting Up Security in the Web Catalog and Dashboards

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To set up a secure Web catalog and secure dashboards, you must understand the information presented in the previous chapters as you will be working with the catalog, dashboards, and Web Groups.

The overall process is:

Create Web Groups.
Set Up the Catalog Structure.
Set Permissions To Catalog Items.
Create Shared Dashboards.
Add Shared Pages, Columns, and Sections.
Add Shared Content.
Test the Dashboards.
Set Up a Virtual Directory For Shared Documents.
Release the Dashboards To the User Community.

Create Web Groups

When you create a Web Group, a shared catalog group folder is automatically created. For more information about Web Groups, see About Web Groups. For more information about the group folder, see Set Up the Catalog Structure.

Set Up the Catalog Structure

The Web Catalog has two main folders:

/Shared. Contains the personal storage and My Dashboards for each user.
/User. Contains shared folders, shared dashboards, and shared dashboard content.

Figure 7 shows the recommended higher-level folder structure for the catalog.

Figure 7.  Recommended catalog folder structure

The catalog structure shown in Figure 7 makes it easier for users and administrators to reorganize content and make shared dashboard sections available. This, in turn, facilitates My Dashboard creation by allowing users to select from shared content.

Items shown within brackets ( [ ] ) are optional. Items shown within angle brackets ( < ) should be replaced with the appropriate name.

Group Folder

When you create a Web Group, the system automatically creates a shared folder for the group. All members of the Web Group are automatically given Read permissions to this folder. These permissions are inherited by any subfolders that you create.

Group folders hold shared dashboard content that pertains to only members of the Web Group. The shared content can be further organized into subfolders under the Group folder.

NOTE:  You may want to remove this folder and grant group permissions to other folders if there is no group-specific content.

Common Folder

Dashboard sections that are shared across groups are saved in a Common folder under the /Shared folder. Content can be organized into subfolders under the Common folder.

Requests Folder

When you create requests in Siebel Answers that you want to share, save them in a Requests folder in the /Shared folder.

Create a folder for each subject area in the Requests folder for storing requests against that subject area. This allows you to manage permissions at the level of the subject area. If two or more subject areas are closely related, so that users with permission to one would almost always have permission to the other, you could create a single folder to store requests against both subject areas.

NOTE:  If a user is given permission to a request in the catalog that references a Subject Area to which the user doesn't have permission, the Siebel Analytics Server will still prevent the user from executing the request.

In cases where you have requests that span subject areas (requests that involve SQL subqueries), you can put them in the folder for any of the subject areas, or create a new folder for users that have permission to these subject areas.

For more information about working with the catalog, see Administering the Siebel Analytics Web Catalog.

Set Permissions To Catalog Items

Before setting permissions to the catalog items you have created, review the information in About Setting Permissions.

Create Shared Dashboards

After setting up the catalog structure and setting permissions, you can create shared dashboards and content for reuse by others. If you did not specify a dashboard when creating a group, you can create one now, selecting the appropriate group folder.

The advantage to creating shared dashboards is that sections that are created in the shared dashboard are actually shortcuts to folders in the /Shared catalog. As such, you can remove them and add them again in a different column, page, or even a different dashboard. Users can quickly create a My Dashboard from existing shared sections by clicking the Add Folder link and selecting the appropriate folder from the /Shared/Group or /Shared/Common folders in the catalog.

If you plan to allow multiple users to modify the Web Group's default dashboard, consider putting these users into another group. For example, suppose you create a Web Group called Sales and create a default dashboard called SalesHome. Of the 40 users that are members of the Sales group, suppose that there are three who need to have the ability to create and modify content for the SalesHome dashboard. It is recommended that you create a SalesAdmin group, with the same back-end permissions of the primary Sales group. Add the three users who will be allowed to make changes to the SalesHome dashboard and content to this new SalesAdmin group, and give this group the appropriate permissions to the Web Catalog. This allows them to create and modify content for the SalesHome dashboard. If a user no longer requires the ability to modify dashboard content, you can change the user's group membership to Sales. If an existing Sales group member needs to have the ability create dashboard content, the user's group membership can be changed to SalesAdmin.

Dashboards are stored in a special folder that is hidden (unless "show hidden items" is checked when working with the catalog). The hidden _Portal folder is located directly underneath a group folder, as shown in this example in Figure 8. Because the dashboard is contained in the Group folder, all the permissions you set to the group folder will be inherited.

Figure 8.  Dashboard Folder Structure in the Catalog

You can create multiple dashboards within a group folder, each of which will have its own folder in the /_Portal folder, named from the dashboard name that you assign.

Underneath the specific dashboard folder, for example, /_Portal/SalesGroup Dashboard, are folders that correspond to the pages you have created in the dashboard.

Underneath the page folder are folders for the columns. Column folders are assigned names automatically by the system. Within the column folders are the sections (folders or shortcuts to folders) that contain the items or shortcuts to items that appear in the dashboard.

For more information about creating shared dashboards, see Creating and Deleting Shared Dashboards.

Add Shared Pages, Columns, and Sections

After you have created dashboards, you can add pages, columns, and sections in preparation for the content.

Adding Pages and Columns

For information about adding pages and columns, see Siebel Analytics User Guide.

Adding Sections

A section is a folder, or a shortcut to a folder, that appears within a dashboard. For the procedure for adding sections to a dashboard, see Creating and Deleting Shared Dashboards.

When adding requests from Siebel Answers to a section, either:

Include requests previously saved to the Subject Area folders.
Create a new request, save it in the appropriate Subject Area folder, and add it to the shared section using the Existing Request link.

This technique is preferred for several reasons. The permissions on the Subject Area folders will automatically filter requests from the dashboard from users that might have dashboard permission, but not permission to certain subject areas. It is easy to reference the same request in multiple dashboard sections, you can change it once, and have it reflected in all sections.

If you are working with content that is specific to a number of group folders, you might want to create a new folder directly underneath the /Shared folder to use, and set permissions to the new folder to Read for the appropriate groups.

Add Shared Content

You can create shared content that can be used within shared and My Dashboard sections. For example, you could create a library of images by creating a folder called Images in the /Shared/Common folder. Add this folder as a section in a dashboard, perhaps the My Dashboard of the Administrator (although it does not really matter because once you place the images in the section you can remove it from the dashboard). Remember, it is a shared section, so the folder will still exist in the shared portion of the catalog. Edit the section and click the Image link to add each image that you want in your library.

NOTE:  If there are a number of libraries that you want to make available for sharing, you might want to create folders within the /Common folder called /Sections, and /Content or /Libraries, so it is easier distinguish when using the common sections and content in other dashboards. To use the shared content in a section of My Dashboard, the user can edit the desired section, click the Item from Catalog link, navigate to the /Shared/Common/Images folder, and click the image to include.

This same mechanism should be used for any logos, images, scripts, links, copyrights, and so on, that might be used in more than one dashboard or dashboard section. This allows you to change the item in one location and have it immediately reflected in all dashboards.

In this version of Siebel Analytics Web, the Existing Request and Item from Catalog links function identically. They allow you to choose any item, including existing requests, from the catalog. This places a shortcut to the item you select in the section.

Test the Dashboards

Before releasing dashboards and content to the user community, perform some tests.

To test the dashboard

Verify that users with appropriate permissions can correctly access it and view the intended content.
Verify that users without appropriate permissions cannot access the dashboard.
Verify that styles and skins are displayed as expected, and that other visual elements are as expected.
Correct any problems you find and test again, repeating this process until you are satisfied with the results.

Set Up a Virtual Directory For Shared Documents

It is recommended that you set up a virtual directory on the Web server for shared documents. Name the directory /DashboardFiles and map it to a shared network directory of the same name.

This allows users with the appropriate permissions to publish files to this folder, and reference these files by their relative URL names rather than by their fully qualified network share names, for example, /DashboardFiles/AnnualReport.doc instead of \\SharedServer\CommonShare\DashboardFiles\AnnualReport.doc.

Release the Dashboards To the User Community

After testing is complete, notify the user community that the dashboard is available, providing the relevant network address.

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