Folder visibility for collaborators

[Cadkunde.nl]

Hello Forum,

Our company wants to open te vault to another company that does specific engineering.

They dont want to open the entire vault, only selected projects.

What I did was make a group called "Collaborators" and added new users to it.

I could now deny then access to folders

I don't know if there is a way of granting access to collaborators.

Because now I have to go through every folder and deny access. (lots of work)

Also there is no visual aid to see which are accessible and which are not.

I was thinking of maybe add a folder category called "Shared Folder" and give that a color.

I was thinking of adding a folder lifecycle and add security options per state

Category allows visual aid, lifecycle allows security restriction

But there is no way to connect them (besides maybe a vault extension script)

But maybe I'm thinking completely wrong here.

I'm sure this company is not the first working with partners they want to allow in the vault.

I want the lead engineer that is working with the partners to be easily clicking a folder and to share it.

And have him being able to visually see the change.

Anyone have a good method?

[Gabriel_Watson]

Yes you can associate specific lifecycles with certain categories. And you can set them to be the default lifecycle for a given folder category, so that every time you switch a folder to that category then the lifecycle becomes the associated default one.

The other way to do this, which I usually did in the past, is to have a "corporate" user group that is given access to the folders you need to share internally, and a "external" (or contractors, or partners) group that is given access to a fraction of those folders only. In Vault, it is usually easier to build such access by looking from the opposite angle of granting access than to restrict access. I will post another similar forum question and answer here where I elaborate further... I just need to look for this.

P.S.: found it here... https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-forum/vault-pro-do-i-need-folder-level-security-acl-for-the-fol...

[Cadkunde.nl]

Thank you.

I have already tried that. But it only works the first time.

I had category "Open folder", with a lifecycle with only 1 state. Lifecycle called "Open"

I had a category "Closed folder", another lifecycle, 1 state. Lifecycle called "Closed"

When changing a regular "folder" to "open folder", it changed to lifecycle "Open"

Very happy...

Then I changed to "closed folder" but the lifecycle stayed "open"

I have to set lifecycle to <None> before it switches again with a category change.

So no, this does not work unfortunately.

Its not an active ON/OFF switch, i can only turn it on one time

[Cadkunde.nl]

About the corporate user group...

And I agree fully that you want to enable rather than disable.

But I don't see how. I need a "Read Deny"

We multiple groups that need to see all:

Viewers

Engineers
Lead engineers

And one group that shouldnt:

Collaborators

[Gabriel_Watson]

Yes, that is a problem when switching. Please vote for this idea:
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-ideas/auto-change-lifecycle-based-on-category-assigned/idi-p/55...

[Gabriel_Watson]

It is hard to visualize the whole implementation so I would recommend testing, but you can have all those internal groups added to another group on top called "CORP".

[Cadkunde.nl]

Ahhh, now I understand.

I saw you could add a group in a group in a group.

But felt that would make things a bit complicated to comprehend and manage in the future.

Also reminds me of inception.

Thanks for the tips and the link to the ideastation

I will not accept solution, because Autodesk needs to address this.

But you will get all the likes I can give you.

I will ask my programmer to link category and lifecycle.

Because it only sounds like A FEW MINUTES WORK

And we CANT TROUBLE AUTODESK WITH THAT NOW CAN WE

[ihayesjr]

@Cadkunde.nl 

If I understand your initial post correctly, you can do what you need without that Idea post.

This depends on your starting folder structure.

Can you provide more information about your folder structure, examples, and where the "Collaborators" need access and where they don't?

[Cadkunde.nl]

@ihayesjr

We have our engineers that need full access to everything

And we want to open our vault to a few engineers that work from a different company. (Collaborators)

We want them to only see the documents they need and not share everything

This is our vault structure. There are many projects (~20) inside the folder "Projecten"

Now the 'collaborators' only need to see the project they work on. (1 out of 20 subfolders)

We want to hide all other projects for them (19 out of 20)

How to do that, and preferably in a way that it is easy to see which folders they can access

[Gabriel_Watson]

In this scenario, you would only need, according to my solution, to replace "Everyone" folder permissions with the "CORP" group for all projects that are NOT shared with external users. I also paired up a folder category (without lifecycle) that colors such folders (a darker grey, for ex.). If external users need to access a given folder, simply leave it as is without restriction ("Everyone" can read).

The problem remains though, that you still need to manually apply security to folders as admin, and not delegate it. It should not be a huge problem unless you have very fast and numerous projects that require this work very often.

[ihayesjr]

I agree with @Gabriel_Watson last response.

What might help you is if you review my AU class on security.

Security Awakens: Defending Against the First Order | Autodesk University

[Cadkunde.nl]

I understand the idea and think its good.

But the lead engineers need to manage these rights for the collaborators.

And I might sound sceptical, but they will make mistakes if done manually

So I will make a button that will change color of the folder and set permissions.

They right click: Open folder --> Color changes and permissions

They right click: Close folder --> Color changes and permissions

I need it this simple

[ihayesjr]

You don't need to make a button to do this. 

You can change the Category and yes, then they have to manually change to the appropriate category Lifecycle definition and state. Which is where that Idea does apply.

There are no options to just change the color of the folder.

[ihayesjr]

Or you could create a custom role giving some of the Engineers enough permissions to change the security on the folder and add the collaborators.

[Cadkunde.nl]

---

@ihayesjr wrote:

You don't need to make a button to do this. 

You can change the Category and yes, then they have to manually change to the appropriate category Lifecycle definition and state. Which is where that Idea does apply.

There are no options to just change the color of the folder.

---

We will make a button, right click a folder and set category and lifecycle at the same time

category to change color

lifecycle to change security

And we will make it available for "Lead engineer" and "Administrator"

Lead engineers need to manage it. They communicate with the collaborators.

Im not going to police that.

If I give them rights, they will make mistakes.

Like accidently deny visibility for themselves and be unable to repair it.

Or forget to 'close the door' when the collaborator is finished on a project.

Or after a while they find it too much hassle and just open everything

Or they got these rights and mess up something entirely different.

You can change security on objects and lifecycles, and that is all great.

And really accessible for programming and administrators.

But what I want is something simple and accessible for engineers.

And that 120 votes on the ideastation is proof.

If category and lifecycle could be linked like in that idea, we wouldnt have to make it ourselves.

I mean its an cad administrator thing, mostly there is just 1 guy like that in each company.

And maybe only 1 out of 100 will find that idea and vote

[Gabriel_Watson]

That's why we're paid the big bucks!

[Cadkunde.nl]

haha, some weeks definitely feel that way