Permission Concept for Forums 

Types of Permissions

In the Admin Console for forums, you can assign the following types of permissions to users:

●      Administrative permissions

These permissions control what administrators and moderators can do within the forum application and with content. Administrators automatically have all the content permissions for the forums for which they are responsible.

●      Content permissions

These permissions control what forum users and groups can do with content.

Permission Levels and the Inheritance of Permissions

There are three levels at which you can apply permissions to users and groups.

Permission Level	Description
Global	These permissions affect the root category and the entire hierarchy of categories.
Category	Permissions at this level affect a certain category and all its subcategories and forums.
Forum	Permissions at this level affect only the forum for which they are defined.

The system automatically passes on permissions from the higher to the related lower levels of permission. You can redefine permissions at category and forum level by revoking permissions (negative permissions) or by assigning new ones (additive permissions).

Priority of Positive Permissions

The permissions of a user are the sum of his or her positive permissions granted both at user and group level.

If a user has the same permission both at user and group level (as a member of that group), it is not sufficient to revoke the permission at user level, since the group permission is still valid for that user.

To avoid multiple permissions, which are difficult to control, we recommend that you assign permissions either to groups or to single users.

Rules for Assigning Permissions

●      If all categories and the forums assigned to them should have the same permissions, you can grant the permissions at global level.

●      If all forums belonging to a category should have the same permissions, you can grant the permissions at category level.

●      If forums should have specific permissions, you can grant the permissions at forum level.

Users and Groups

All users and groups that can access forums are managed in the User Management Engine (UME) of the portal.

Assign administrative or content permissions only to UME users or groups.

To avoid general permissions, which make it difficult to control the access of users to forums, do not assign content permissions to the default groups Registered Users and Anyone.

Further Access Control

In addition to using permissions, you can control the access of users to forums by banning user accounts or IP addresses and by defining global interceptors.

More information: Banning User Accounts or IP Addresses, Intercepting Messages

More Information

Managing Access to Forum Content