Roles

Introduction – 00:00

Hello, and welcome to the Freezerworks Learning Series, your visual guide to our sample management software. Today I'm going to go over the new way in which you control User permissions in Freezerworks. Prior to Freezerworks 2017, every time you created a User, you needed to configure several pages of permissions every time as well. This isn't really efficient, nor does it reflect how you assign credentials in the real world.

What is a Freezerworks Role? – 00:35

Instead of configuring permissions each time for every user, permissions are determined by a User's Role, a sort of package of permissions, one that can be assigned to as many users as you wish. Let's say you have three Users working in the same department with matching Roles, and you determine they no longer need permission to delete samples. Rather than opening each User record and removing the permission three separate times, you'll open their shared Role and remove the permission just once.

Creating Roles – 01:00

Why don't we create a Role, and then assign it to a User? To start, open System Administration – Roles, Users, Groups, then click Roles on the mini menu. On the list of Roles, you'll notice that some roles already exist; there are two pre-stocked Roles, the System Administrator and Accessioning and Inventory. If you upgraded from a version of Freezerworks prior to 2017, there will be roles called Role 1, Role 2, and so on, according to each discrete set of permissions you configured for users in the past. Now, the System Administrator role has all permissions turned on, it's also not editable and should be left for users who are administrators. Accessioning and inventory, on the other hand, is editable and you can duplicate it to start working from if you'd like. Let's do that, highlight Accession and Inventory, click Duplicate, and then OK on the confirmation. Now we have a copy of the Role. Let's open it and edit it for our use.

Editing a Role – 02:15

To start, change the name to something that makes more sense. How about we make a View Only role? We can provide a description if we want, but it's not necessary. Alright, now we start checking on and off permissions as we see fit. For a View Only role, we should only leave “View” permissions checked on. We could check off permissions one by one, but since most of these permissions are turned on and need to be checked off, let's use the Select All box twice to turn off all the permissions on the current tab. Then we only need to check on a few “View” permissions to get our job done. Alright, that's the inventory, tab let's move through the other tabs and ensure that only the proper permissions are turned on. If you'd like, you can skip ahead to where we'll assign the role to a user.

Assigning the Role to a User – 03:47

Now save the Role, close the Roles, and click the Users button on the mini menu this time. Alright, let's open a User and assign the Role. In this gray box next to the Select Role heading, you'll see the roles that this User is already assigned. Click the box to modify it. Here is the list of existing Roles. As you can see, you can assign a User multiple Roles, with one of them being set as our default. Users assigned multiple Roles will simply be given a prompt upon login to select the role they'd like to use during that session. To change the role, they will have to log out and log back in. So, let's check on the Assigned box for the role we just created, and then the Default box too. We can imagine that this User just needs to see and report on data most the time, not manipulate it, so they would normally rather be logged in with more restricted permissions for security purposes. Click Accept to return to the User form and you'll notice that “View Only” is now listed in the Select Role box. Click Save and we are returned to the Users list view. I could easily open the other users and assign the role to them too, but I think you get the idea.

Conclusion – 05:10

If you need more assistance, consult our help guide or our dedicated Freezerworks support staff. Thanks as always for watching, see you next time.