Introduction To Security And Collect!'s Interface

A flexible, multi level, Password protected security system is built into Collect!. This enables you to control which users can access different parts of the program, customizing control over which forms and fields they can access, and what menu choices the user has available. The level of control is beautifully detailed allowing you to tailor Collect! to your specific requirements.

The Access Rights security system uses the concept of User Levels and individual users. Each user is assigned a level. Each level is permitted certain Access Rights. Controlling rights in this way, you can limit a user's access to menus, forms and even fields. Collect! ships with over 10 user levels defined, from OWNER, with complete access, to GUEST, who can only view a very limited set of data without being able to edit anything.

GUEST level can also be used for Client Type operators to allow a Client to view only their accounts in your system. This works with the Client 'Owned by" field too. So you can allow a client to search for records in your database using Browse Find By while limiting them to only see what is in their hierarchical "owned by" tree.

Form level access control can allow users to create new records, edit existing data, allow display only access, or completely prohibit access to any given form. Access to each field in a form can also be controlled. You can allow users to edit the data in a field, just view the data, or you can even hide a field from being displayed.

The Access Rights system also allows you to change the labels on forms, fields and menus. Customize the system to suit your requirements. For example, one user might be viewing Collect! in Spanish while another Operator could be viewing Collect! in English.

Sophisticated changes to the forms can happen automatically when a user opens a record. This provides a very flexible way to modify the form based on the kind of data you are storing. For example, the field on the Debtor form labeled Contact could be set to Patient where the debtor Type field is set to Medical.

Keep in mind that Account Access Control offers the ability to restrict which accounts operators have access to. So besides controlling access to forms and fields as described above, you can also apply security in another way and limit access based on accounts or operators.

Summary

We have discussed several ways of controlling what your operators see when they sign into Collect!. For security purposes you can restrict certain areas of the system and also certain accounts. You can also change field and form labels to suit your needs. We recommend that you practice in the Demonstration database to see how Collect! uses access rights for different levels of operators. Take baby steps, try one change and test. It takes a fair amount of planning before you attempt to make changes to the user's interface.

See Also

- Security And User Levels
- Modifying Collect! Forms And Fields
- Security And Aliases Topics
- Account Access Control