Document Security


Document security determines which users have access to a document, and what functions the user can perform on the document.  This includes viewing the document, checking out or checking in new revisions for the document, modifying the document properties, modifying the index field data, moving or copying the document, deleting the document, and changing the document's security.

A user must be an Owner of the document to grant others rights to see it. Essentially, assigning security access to a document shares and makes it visible to those users who have been given permission to that object.

It is best practice to use groups to assign rights to a document. When this is not possible you can permit a user direct access.


There are three different ways to grant security access to a document.

  • Folder Security - provides access to all documents uploaded to the folder

  • Project security - provides access to documents from within the project view

  • Document security - provides access to an individual document

If you are assigning security to a document that is nested under multiple levels of subfolders, a user must have at least viewer access to the folder structure above the document, meaning the document's parent folder, that parent folder's parent folder, and so on all the way up to the root (top-level) folder. If you are using projects to view documents, then this is not necessary.
Administrators can also control what users view based upon how they configure the menus, pages, and tabs for forms, and projects. Users may have access to a document, but if the top level menu or tabs do not facilitate a connection to the document, then users will not be able to see it.

The following sections describe how to modify a document's security from the security tab of the document properties, and also give a table for the various level of permissions and what functions they are able to perform on the document. Refer to the Folder Security and Project Security sections for more information on modifying security on those levels.

Modifying Security at the Document Level

  1. Navigate to the Security tab of the document's properties. This can be accomplished by clicking Security in the document context menu, or opening the document properties and clicking the security tab.
  2. Click the Modify Security button.

  3. Select the user(s) or group(s) from the Member Selection column to add permissions to the document, or select from the Assigned Members to remove their permissions from the document.
  4. Select the type of permission to assign to the user(s), or select Remove to remove the user(s) from the assigned list.
  5. Close the window.

Even though document security can be modified on the individual document level, it is not possible to remove a user's permissions to the document that is assigned at the folder level. For example, if user has viewer access to a folder, they will always have at least viewer access to all of the documents within that folder. The user cannot have their viewing privileges removed for one of the documents within that folder.
It is strongly recommended that groups be used to assign permissions throughout VisualVault. This will ease the administrative overhead when needing to remove permissions for specific users.

Document Security Roles and Permissions

The following matrix depicts the functionality available to each role in VisualVault for documents. Note that the "Contributor" is not a role at this time, but is planned for the future.

Document Permission Matrix:

Application Area/Ability

VaultAccess

VaultAdmin

Owner

Editor

Contributor

Viewer

Public

View Document (Released)

X

☨

X

X

X

X

X**

View Document (UnReleased)

X

X

X

Download Document *

X

X

X

X

X

X

Create/View Workflow

X

X

X

Check in/Check Out Library Services

X

X

X

View Document ID Card

X

X

X

X

X

Modify Description, Keyword, Abstract

X

X

X

Modify Filename

X

X

X

Modify Document Library Status

X

X

X

Modify Index Field Data

X

X

X

Modify Record Retention Dates

X

X

X

Create/View Workflow

X

X

X

View Revision List

X

X

X

View Document Relationships**

X

X

X

X

X

Manage Document Relationships

X

X

X

View Related Forms List**

X

X

X

X

X

Manage Form Relationship

X

X

X

View Related Projects List**

X

X

X

X

X

Manage Project Relationship

X

X

X

View History

X

X

X

View Security

X

X

Modify Security

X

X

View Document Training

X

X

X

Manage Training Template

X

X

Manage Users/Groups Training

X

X

Move Documents

X

X

X

Copy Documents

X

X

X

Delete Documents

X

X

X

*Public users can download documents when they have been given specific rights and when they have been sent a link to the document. Users are given the choice to Open, or download all documents from VisualVault when they have rights. When opened, documents are downloaded by default to the temporary internet files. Users can save the document to other locations on the hard disk when they are downloading the document, or they can save it after the document is opened into the native viewer.

**Only when the user has been given rights to the corresponding forms, documents, or projects.

☨ VaultAdmin will see only documents where they have specifically been given permission to view them.