Read this topic in its entirety to understand how groups work within the ACM.
Sample group folder hierarchies
Site groups and system administrators
What to do once you have decided on the groups you want
Why are groups important? In order for a person to log onto the ACTIVE Content Manager, they MUST belong to at least one user group. This is because all ACTIVE Content Manager users are assigned to groups and it is the Groups (not individuals) that are given access to the features and functions within the system.
Groups, and the rights you assign to them, control who can create content, who can approve content, who can change the design of a site, who can create new users, who can upload digital assets (photos and files), etc. You cannot do anything with the ACM, unless you are assigned to a group that permits you to do things.
How do I decide which groups to create? It is important to spend time planning how to implement your user groups. We suggest you consider the following when creating groups:
For starters each installation of the ACM comes with a set of default users that includes but is not limited to:
A system administrator group
Site administrator group
Site design group
Site manager group
Content provider group
Individuals assigned to the System Administrator group have full rights to all aspects of the system. This person will have been chosen carefully and will be the go-to person for a lot of the group, user and system management.
To create your own customized groups, use your organizational chart to break your users out into departments/functional areas; what are the logical departmental or content areas of the organization; think about who the people are that will be performing tasks within each of those areas and what tasks will they be performing; for example:
Mary will be creating content for the Human Resources department. She will not be performing any other functions. So she will be assigned to a content provider group that has rights only to the portions of the site required by the Human Resources Department.
Mary will need access to the Digital Assets Manager, the Pagelets (Syndication) Manager but no other Admin Center functions.
organize the users into groups based on their rights to do certain things within the department - corresponding roughly to their hierarchical level within their department/functional area; decide who in the departments will create content, approve content or monitor content.
keep groups as discreet as possible - create more groups to allow for more domains of control rather than fewer. You can assign users to an unlimited number of groups so if you make many groups that have control over small portions of the system, you can assign a user who needs more access to more groups. You will not want to make a small number of groups that have access to a lot because when you assign a user to a group, they get all the rights of that group.
if you are using site groups, inotherwords if you will be creating distinctly separate groups of sites within the ACM, you will be need to create distinct user groups for each site within each site group. (see Site groups overview for more information)
If you will be creating a large number of groups, or you will be using Site Groups and maintaining groups of groups, you will need to create group folders to keep the groups in. This will help you keep your groups organized and discrete. For example, you may create a folder for the Human Resources department and put all of the user groups within that department in that folder. You may then create another for Product Development and one for Finance, depending on how large your organization is and how the work of maintaining the web sites in the ACM is distributed.
The samples below will help you to visualize how group hierarchies may look for an organization that will not be using Site Groups and one that is.
Without use of site groups:
The following example shows a hypothetical ACM installation where there are multiple sites but all for the same corporation - ABC Companies. The default top-most level of folders - Groups - is created automatically. Then, for each site you create within your ACM (ABC Auto Parts and ABC Auto Service in the sample below), you would probably want to create a single Folder that would hold all sub-folders for that site.
Groups
ABC Auto Parts Site
ABC Auto Parts content approvers
John Smith
Bob Jackson
ABC Auto Parts content monitors
Jane Donnally
Karl Rodgers
ABC Auto Parts content providers
Betty White
Paul Smith
ABC Auto Service Site
ABC Auto Service content approvers
Helly Jantzen
Marg Smith
ABC Auto Service content monitors
Kyle Jackson
Bob Johnston
ABC Auto Service content providers
Betty Carlton
Bev Smith
With site groups enabled:
In this example, there is an additional layer in the hierarchy - the site groups - that are used to separate groups of sites used for organizations you wish to keep completely separate. For example, you might host websites for 3 separate organizations and want all data separate. This means you would have a site group for each organization and all of their sites would be kept in their own distinct site group.
ABC Group (this is a site group)
ABC Auto Parts site (this is a site within the site group)
ABC Parts approvers folder
user 1
user 2
ABC Parts monitors folder
user 3
user 4
ABC Parts providers folder
user 5
user 6
ABC Heavy Machinery Rentals (this is a site within the site group)
ABC Heavy Machinery approvers folder
ABC Heavy Machinery monitors folder
ABC Heavy Machinery providers folder
ABC Limousines (this is a site within the site group)
ABC Limousines approvers folder
ABC Limousines monitors folder
ABC Limousines providers folder
Hillside Group (this is a site group)
Hillside Plumbing folder (this is a site within the site group)
site 1 approvers folder
site 1 monitors folder
site 1 providers folder
Hillside Foundations folder (this is a site within the site group)
site 2 approvers folder
site 2 monitors folder
site 2 providers folder
Hillside Home & Garden Supply (this is a site within the site group)
site 3 approvers folder
site 3 monitors folder
site 3 providers folder
When site groups are used, site group administrators will create user groups within their own site group. The user groups they create will not have access to sites in any other site groups within the ACM installation. Only the master System Administrator will have rights across all of the site groups.
If you are the ACM's system administrator, you will notice that the Group Manager displays a high-level group folder for each site group you create. In the example below, the top-most group folder is the Groups folder. The ABC Companies Group is an automatically created site group folder. When the site group administrator creates groups, they will be within that folder.
When site group managers open the Group Manager, the top-most group folder in the hierarchy will be the one for their site group. In the example below, the ABC Companies Groups administrator is viewing the Group Manager. Note that the top-level folder no longer says Groups but is the name of the Site Group - ABC Companies Groups.
When creating groups and users you should proceed as follows:
Create user records in the User Manager. For this you will need to have a list of the users in your organization. You should create a format to be used that is consistent and use this for all user records you create. For example, you might use First Initial, Middle Initial, Last name as the User ID (e.g. lshunter, bmsmith, plapplethwaite). You can assign a temporary password to users that they can change later.
Create group folders that correspond to your site groups, sites, departments, sections, or functional areas of your organization (e.g. Finance, Sales & Marketing, Human Resources, Research, Product Development. If you have a large organization, you may want to create 2 levels of folders.
Create groups within your folders (e.g. Within the Finance folder, you may want to create groups corresponding to those who will be creating content, those who will be approving content and those who will be monitoring changes to content). For example HR Content Providers.
Add users to the group and assign the various permissions (access to Admin Center functions such as My Page, Digital Asset Manager, Syndication Manager, etc.). You will also assign which sites the users can access.
Regular users of the ACM are those who are internal to your organization and are given user ids and passwords so that they can log into the ACM and perform the tasks assigned to them. This includes your content providers who edit the actual page content, and others who perform functions within the ACM.
The ACM also includes another kind of user who is NOT internal to your organization but who may need to log in so that you can authenticate them and give them secure access to parts of your system. This is accomplished using the ACM "Public User" feature that allows the creation of a user account with a minimum amount of required information (email address and password) while protecting the rest of the system by denying any other system permissions to a public user.
The public user can access personalized sections of a site but cannot edit any content.
Public Users can only be assigned to groups that are of type Public. If a user already belongs to a non-public group, you will not be permitted to add them to the Public Group. They must be removed from all other non-public groups before being made into a Public User.