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User groups and folder permissions

Jonathan Chandler

We're testing the use of Draft Space as a tool for SMEs to document their knowledge during the product development process. Since this is new territory, I'd like to keep folders and permissions separate from the rest of our content in the repository until we're a little further along. We've set up a distinct user group for these SMEs, but we're having some trouble setting up a folder with the proper permissions.

 

Our tech writers are all in the "default department" user group. We set up a "product engineering" user group and added the three SMEs to this group. I want to set up a folder structure for product engineering and limit that user group privileges to those folders. However, it looks like folder permissions are inherited. Since the Tech Comm Group folder and Product Engineering are both within the "General" folder, I'm having a hard time setting up the folder permissions the way I want. General is the top-level folder, so I'm unable to create another folder on the same level as the General folder.

Screenshot showing a folder structure with three folders. The top-level folder is named 'General' with two subfolders: 'Product Engineering' and 'Technical Communications Group'.

 

 

Here's what I'm trying to do:

Default department user group--access to all folders

Product engineering user group--access only to product engineering folders

 

Anyone have suggestions for how to do this properly?

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[edited by: RWS Community AI at 2:31 PM (GMT 0) on 14 Nov 2024]
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    Thanks . Good questions and I know we have discussed directly but I thought I'd respond here to share the recommendations with the Community. 

    Folders can have only one “owner” (that is, a group with “write” access), but multiple groups with read access. However, user groups are cumulative, meaning that a user assigned to Group A and Group B will have write access to folders for which either group is assigned as owner. Given these constraints, here is a practical example based on your described scenario:

    [Project] (no owner)
        [Content Set A] (owner = Writers, read access = all)
        [Content Set B] (owner = Writers, read access = none) 
        [Content Set C] (owner = SMEs, read access = all)

    In this example, users would see the following behavior:
    - Content Set A: only users in “Writers” group can edit, all other users can see and reference (read only)
    - Content Set B: only writers can edit, other users cannot even see the folder.
    - Content Set C: only users in “SMEs” group can edit, all other users can see and reference.

    With regard to User groups, they only apply to folder permissions. Keeping in mind that only one group can be assigned as “owner” for a folder, we recommend creating one user group for each type of content that no one else should be able to edit.

    In terms of overarching best practices, we recommend to plan out the usage carefully before implementing. Changing folder permissions after the fact is not a trivial process, so we advise to create the minimum number of groups required and do not create groups that “might be” required in the future. You can always add truly required groups later.
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