Oracle Waveset 8.1.1 Business Administrator's Guide

Understanding and Managing Admin Roles

Admin Roles define two things: a set of capabilities and a scope of control. (The term scope of control refers to one or more managed organizations.) Once defined, admin roles can then be assigned to one or more administrators.


Note –

Do not confuse roles with admin-roles. Roles are used to manage end-users’ access to external resources, whereas admin-roles are primarily used to manage Waveset administrator access to Waveset objects.

The information presented in this section is limited to admin roles. For information about roles, see Understanding and Managing Roles.


Multiple admin roles can be assigned to a single administrator. This enables an administrator to have one set of capabilities in one scope of control, and a different set of capabilities in another scope of control. For example, one admin role might grant the administrator the right to create and edit users for the controlled organizations specified in that admin role. A second admin role assigned to the same administrator, however, might grant only the “change users’ passwords” right in a separate set of controlled organizations as defined in that admin role.

Admin roles enable the reuse of capabilities and scope-of-control pairings. Admin roles also simplify the management of administrator privileges across a large number of users. Instead of directly assigning capabilities and controlled organizations to individual users, admin roles should be used to grant administrator privileges.

The assignment of capabilities or organizations (or both) to an admin role can be either direct or dynamic (indirect).

The dynamic assignment of admin roles to users can be enabled or disabled for each login interface (for example, the User interface or Administrator interface). To do this, set the following system configuration attribute to true or false:

security.authz.checkDynamicallyAssignedAdminRolesAtLoginTo.logininterface

The default for all interfaces is false.

For instructions on editing the system configuration object, see Editing Waveset Configuration Objects.

Admin Role Rules

Waveset provides sample rules that you can use to create rules for Admin Roles. These rules are available in the Waveset installation directory in sample/adminRoleRules.xml.

Table 6–1 provides the rule names and the authType you must specify for each rule.

Table 6–1 Admin Role Sample Rules

Rule Name  

authType

Controlled Organizations Rule 

ControlledOrganizationsRule

Capabilities Rule 

CapabilitiesRule

User Is Assigned Admin Role Rule 

UserIsAssignedAdminRoleRule


Note –

For information about the sample rules provided for service provider users admin roles, see Delegated Administration for Service Provider Users in Chapter Chapter 17, Service Provider Administration.


The User Admin Role

Waveset includes a built-in admin role, named User Admin Role. By default, it has no assigned capabilities or controlled organization assignments. It cannot be deleted. This admin role is implicitly assigned to all users (end-users and administrators) at login time, regardless of the interface they log in to (for example, user, administrator, console, or Identity Manager IDE).


Note –

For information about creating an admin role for service provider users, see Delegated Administration for Service Provider Users in ChapterChapter 17, Service Provider Administration.


You can edit the User Admin Role through the Administrator interface (select Security, and then select Admin Roles).

Because any capabilities or controlled organizations that are statically assigned through this admin role are assigned to all users, it is recommended that the assignment of capabilities and controlled organizations be done through rules. This will enable different users to have different (or no) capabilities, and assignments will be scoped depending on factors such as who they are, which department they are in, or whether they are managers, which can be queried for within the context of the rules.

The User Admin Role does not deprecate or replace the use of the authorized=true flag used in workflows. This flag is still appropriate in cases where the user should not have access to objects accessed by the workflow, except when the workflow is executing. Essentially, this lets the user enter a run as superuser mode.

There may be cases, however, where a user should have specific access to one or more objects outside of (and potentially inside of) workflows. In these cases, using rules to dynamically assign capabilities and controlled organizations allows for fine-grain authorization to those objects.

Creating and Editing Admin Roles

To create or edit an admin role, you must be assigned the Admin Role Administrator capability.

To access admin roles in the Administrator interface, click Security, and then click the Admin Roles tab. The Admin Roles list page allows you to create, edit, and delete admin roles for Waveset users and for service provider users.

To edit an existing admin role, click a name in the list. Click New to create an admin role. Waveset displays the Create Admin Role options (illustrated in Figure 6–3). The Create Admin Role view presents four tabs that you use to specify the general attributes, capabilities, and scope of the new admin role, as well as assignments of the role to users.

Figure 6–3 Admin Role Create Page: General Tab

Figure illustrating an example Create Admin Role view

General Tab

Use the General tab of the create admin role or edit admin role view to specify the following basic characteristics of the admin role:


Note –

For information about creating an admin role to grant access to service provider users, see Delegated Administration for Service Provider Users in Chapter Chapter 17, Service Provider Administration.


Scope of Control

Waveset allows you to control which users are within an end user’s scope of control.

Use the Scope of Control tab (shown in Figure 6–4) to specify organizations that members of this organization can manage, or to specify the rule that determines the organizations to be managed by users of the admin role, and to select the user form for the admin role.

Figure 6–4 Create Admin Role: Scope of Control

Figure illustrating the Scope of Control tab

Assigning Capabilities to the Admin Role

Capabilities assigned to the admin role determine what administrative rights users assigned the admin role have. For example, this admin role might be restricted to creating users only for the controlled organizations of the admin role. In that case, you assign the Create User capability.

On the Capabilities tab, select the following options:

Assigning User Forms to an Admin Role

You can specify a user form to for the members of an admin role. Use the Assign To Users tab on the create admin role or edit admin role view to specify the assignments.

The administrator assigned the admin role will use this user form when creating or editing users in the organizations controlled by that admin role. A user form assigned through an admin role overrides any user form that is inherited from the organization of which the admin is a member. This user form does not override a user form that is directly assigned to the admin.

The user form that is used when editing a user is determined in this order of precedence:

If an admin is assigned more than one admin role that controls the same organization but specifies different user forms, then an error is displayed when he attempts to create or edit a user in that organization. If an admin attempts to assign two or more admin roles that control the same organization but specify different user forms, then an error is displayed. Changes cannot be saved until the conflict is resolved.