Groups

This page describes the naming conventions used at SDSU for groups in Modern Campus CMS and the default groups created for each site. For general information on creating and managing groups in the CMS, visit Groups on the Modern Campus CMS Support site.

Group Names

Groups are used to manage access to content or features in Modern Campus CMS and may also be used to help account administrators group users based on affiliation or type. Group names may contain:

• letters,
• numbers,
• hyphens (-),
• spaces,
• underscores (_), and
• periods (.)

Group names must be between two and thirty-two characters in length.

Naming Conventions

Given the large number of sites in Modern Campus CMS and the need to control access to the content and features of those sites, naming conventions help our sites coexist within the environment and make it easier to identify the purpose of a group at a glance. It is recommended that you verify access settings when making changes/assignments, even when the groups appear to follow these conventions. We differentiate group names based on a few factors:

Mixed-Case Names

Groups which use uppercase letters in their names are not specific to one site and do not control access to content. In older accounts, some of these were used to indicate the organizational unit of specific users (e.g. IT Division or StratComm). A couple of these are used to control access to features or set the users who receive certain notifications at the account level. The prod account contains the following mixed-case groups:

• Everyone: A built-in group which contains all the users in the account. You can use this group in the Access Settings dialog, but this is not recommended.
• Request Help Recipients: Members of this group will receive a message/email when someone uses the Request Help gadget in Omni CMS.
• Snippets Bootstrap3: Controls access to snippets used by the Business/College templates. Pages using these templates should only be deployed to the prod account for a limited time with the intent of migrating them to the Crimson templates, so access to the templates' snippets is usually not required.
• Students: All students should be added to this group when their users are created.

All Lowercase Names

Groups which use only lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens (-), and spaces in their names (and to a limited extent underscores and periods), but absolutely no uppercase letters, control access to content or features on a specific site. In the prod account, these must be prefixed with the site name.

A group which has exactly the same name as a site controls access to the site. While some sites may not use any additional groups to control access to their content, others may not allow members of this group to access any of the site's content.

For all other groups using lowercase names, the character immediately following the site name is either a hyphen (-) or a space, and this implies the purpose of the group.

Hyphen following site name

A hyphen immediately following the site name indicates that the group controls access to specific content on the site. The rest of the name should indicate the relevant sections/files (e.g. www-contact controls access to the /contact section of the www site).

Spaces may be used after the initial hyphen, but should only be used for unusual circumstances. For example, www-conferences view gives users access to the /conferences section of the www site, but not to any of the pages/sub-sections within it (a pseudo-"view only" form of access). Membership in the www-conferences group is required to edit the pages within that section, but members of the www-conferences view group are often members of a group which can edit a sub-section within /conferences.

Space following site name

A space immediately following the site name indicates that the group controls access to functionality on the site. These are usually created at the same time as the site:

• sitename alerts: controls access to the Emergency Alerts functionality (under Add-Ons > Emergency Alerts). By default, these users will also receive emails when changes are made to the site's alerts, but a separate group can be created to receive these alerts, if desired. This also grants access to /ou-alerts/alerts-config.pcf, which provides some configuration options for the alerts.
• sitename analytics: controls access to view Google Analytics data in the various Analytics gadgets in Omni CMS. The gadgets don't seem to work with higher-traffic Google Analytics accounts, so we no longer create these groups (or enable these gadgets) by default.
• sitename calendar or sitename calendarname calendar: controls access to submit events for a calendar.
• sitename calendar approval or sitename calendarname calendar approval: controls access to approve/publish events for a calendar.
• sitename insights: controls access to the Insights functionality (under Reports > Insights). Users in this group will also receive an email of these reports when the site is scanned (this will always be overnight, by default once a week, though we can configure it to run more or less often). By default this also controls access to the insights.txt file, which can be used to add/remove pages from the scan.
• sitename page-redirect: This group may be used to grant access to the redirect options in the page properties for level 5+ users and the New Redirect page template.
• sitename site-admin: This group is used to control access to some of the more sensitive files on the site, like .config and /_resources/include/ files, as well as files which may require the assistance of an administrator (e.g. a-to-z.pcf and sitemap.pcf, which require the site's sitemap.xml to be published).

While a site owner may request that we change the Access Settings of some specific files or some aspects of these pieces of functionality, we do recommend keeping the basic functionality under the control of these groups.

Renaming a Group

Once a group is created, it can't be renamed. As a work-around, an account administrator can do the following:

1. Copy the group, giving the copy the desired name (the users of the original group will now be members of the copy, as well).
2. Find everything that required the original group for access (folders/sections, files, sites, features/functionality).
3. Change the Access Group for those items to the new group.
4. Delete the original group.

Default Access Groups in Crimson

Site and Features

• Site Access Group: {sitename} (Apply to All Existing Files and Folders in the Site)
• Insights Access Group: {sitename} insights
• Emergency Alerts Access Group: {sitename} alerts
• Emergency Alerts Notified Users: {sitename} alerts

Content (Sections/Folders and Pages)

• /_props.pcf: {sitename} site-admin
• /_resources
  • /_resources/csharp: {sitename} site-admin
  • /_resources/data: {sitename} site-admin
  • /_resources/dmc: {sitename} site-admin
  • /_resources/error-pages: {sitename} site-admin (Apply to This Folder and All Enclosed Files and Folders)
  • /_resources/includes: {sitename} site-admin
  • /_resources/ldp: {sitename} site-admin
    • /_resources/ldp/forms/xsl: (Administrators Only)
  • /_resources/ou: {sitename} site-admin
    • /_resources/ou/editor: {sitename} site-admin
    • /_resources/ou/templates: (Administrators Only)
  • /_resources/search: (Administrators Only)
    • /_resources/search/xsl: (Administrators Only)
• /a-to-z.pcf: {sitename} site-admin
• /insights.txt: {sitename} insights
• /ou-alerts: {sitename} alerts (Apply to This Folder and All Enclosed Files and Folders)
  • /ou-alerts/__emergency-alerts-folder.inc: (Administrators Only)
  • /ou-alerts/_do-not-modify-this-folder.inc: (Administrators Only)
  • /ou-alerts/xsl: (Administrators Only)
• /robots.txt: {sitename} site-admin
• /sitemap.pcf: {sitename} site-admin
• /web-rewrite-maps.config: {sitename} site-admin
• /web-rewrite-rules.config: {sitename} site-admin
• /web.config: {sitename} site-admin