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About Access Control

Access control is the term used to describe the set of Siebel application mechanisms that control user access to data and application functionality. As you work with this chapter, determine how the terminology and concepts presented here correspond to your company's internal terminology and structure. This chapter explains the Siebel access mechanisms, but you have to decide during the planning stage how to combine the mechanisms to meet your business and security needs.

In Siebel application terms, a screen represents a broad area of functionality, such as working on accounts. The set of screens to which a user has access is determined by the applications that your company has purchased. Each screen is represented as a tab at the top of the window. In the example below, the Accounts screen is displayed.

Each screen contains multiple views to provide different kinds of access to the data. To the user, a view is simply a Web page. Within a view, the user might see lists of data records or forms, presenting individual or multiple records, and sometimes child records. (These lists and forms are referred to as applets in a configuration context.) Each view (or grouping of views) is represented by text in the link bar below the screen tabs.

For example, Figure 5 shows the Account List View, which corresponds to the applet title My Accounts (the current visibility filter selection). Multiple view modes provide access to different views that filter the data differently. In the Account List View, the current user can view accounts owned or assigned to this user. Choosing All Accounts from the visibility filter displays the All Account List View instead, assuming the user has access to this view.

Figure 5. My Accounts View

To control the resources and privileges that users are entitled to once they have accessed a Siebel application and have been authenticated, Siebel CRM provides the following access-control elements:

• View-level access control. A screen is composed of views, and the collection of views to which users have access determines the application functionality available to them. Access to views is determined by responsibilities.

  Organizations are generally arranged around job functions, with employees being assigned one or more functions. In Siebel CRM, these job functions are called responsibilities. Each responsibility is associated with one or more views, which represent data and functionality needed for a job function. Each user must be assigned at least one responsibility to access the Siebel application.

  Siebel Business Applications ship with many predefined responsibilities and you can also define any additional responsibilities you require. For additional information, see Responsibilities and Access Control.

• Record-level access control. Record-level access control is used to assign permissions to individual data items within an application so that only authenticated users who need to view particular data records have access to that information. You can control the data records that each user can see through a variety of mechanisms, including direct record ownership by a user (personal access control) or being on the same team as the record owner (team access control). The following topics examine access control further:
  • Access Control for Parties
  • Access Control for Data
• Business Components and Data Access. Within Siebel CRM, views are based on business components and must use one of the view modes specified for the business component. A business component's view mode determines the record-level access control mechanisms that can be applied to the business component in any view. Applet and view properties also determine the data available in a view. For additional information, see About View and Data Access Control.

Figure 6 illustrates the Siebel access control elements. As shown in the figure, responsibilities provide access to views, and the data records visible to a user on a view are determined by the type of access control that applies to the data, the business component view mode, and view and applet visibility properties.

Figure 6. Siebel Business Applications Access Control Elements