Security By Relationship to Specific Group

In applications with relatively few levels of permission assignment, security can be reasonably set up by detecting whether or not the currently logged-in user is related to a certain permission group.

To set up this type of security, you first need a method of identifying a specific group. There are three common methods of doing this:

• By group name
  If you as the builder are the only user who can edit the name of the groups involved, and you are very confident that the names of the groups do not need to change, identifying a certain group based on its name is an acceptable method.
• By selection or checkbox field on group
  A more reliable method than using the group's name, creating a drop-down or separate checkboxes for each group is a second way of identifying a certain group. For example, if the application will have three groups: sales, service, and administration, you might create a static drop-down for those three options, or alternately three checkboxes. These fields would then need to be set appropriately in order to identify the groups.
• By selecting group on global application settings
  The most reliable and flexible method of the three, under this method, you'd need to have a global application settings table, and on that table, you'd need a selection field for each group you need to identify.

Once you've chosen your method of identifying a certain group, you're ready to set up your security. Find a page you wish to control access to, and bring up the automation layer. Access the action manager for the page, and view the security for the page. Set up a record exist evaluation to check and see if the current user is related to the group you wish to check for. Based on the result of that evaluation, use a set modes or hide form action.