User Security

User security is the core of security administration in PeopleSoft applications. You administer user security using several basic elements.

To establish appropriate user access:

  1. Define permission lists.

    Permission lists are the building blocks of user security authorization. A permission list grants a degree of access to a particular combination of PeopleSoft elements, specifying pages, development environments, time periods, administrative tools, personalizations, and so on.

    This level of access should be appropriate to a narrowly defined and limited set of tasks, which can apply to a variety of users with a variety of different roles. These users might have overlapping, but not identical, access requirements.

    You typically define permission lists before you define roles and user profiles. When defining permission lists, however, consider the roles that you will use them with.

    See Understanding Permission Lists

  2. Define roles.

    A role is a collection of permission lists. You can assign one or more permission lists to a role. The resulting combination of permissions can apply to all users who share those access requirements. However, the same group of users might also have other access requirements that they don't share with each other. You can assign a given permission list to multiple roles.

    You typically define roles after first defining their permission lists, and before defining user profiles. You use roles to assign permissions to users dynamically.

    See Understanding Roles.

  3. Define user profiles.

    A user profile is a definition that represents one PeopleSoft user. Each user is unique; the user profile specifies a number of user attributes, including one or more assigned roles. Each role that's assigned to a given user profile adds its permission lists to the total that apply to that user.

    You typically define user profiles after defining their roles. You can assign a given role to multiple user profiles. It's worthwhile to define a set of roles that you're confident can be assigned to user profiles that you'll create in the future.

    See Understanding User Profiles.