Assign security and workflow roles

Assign security roles to users to give varying levels of authority to perform tasks in the catalog. Assign workflow roles to allow users to create, edit, review, approve, and publish glossary assets as part of the development of terms and categories. Workflow roles can restrict access to glossary assets while they are under development.

Security roles

Use IBM® InfoSphere® Information Server Web console to assign security roles to users of InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.

Security roles determine what types of catalog content a user can access and what kinds of changes a user can make to the catalog.

Workflow roles for glossary assets

When you enable the workflow feature, the catalog is split into a development glossary and the catalog. The development glossary contains glossary assets that are being created or revised but that are not yet published. The development glossary also contains copies of glossary assets as they exist in the catalog, if the assets were not revised.

When workflow is enabled, users who have specific workflow roles can create, edit, approve, review, and publish glossary assets. All users can add a comment to the glossary assets that are in the development glossary.

You can assign workflow roles to users who have the Information Governance Catalog Glossary Author or the Information Governance Catalog User role in the Administration tab. The security role for the user or user group determines which workflow roles you can assign. A single user or user group can be assigned to multiple workflow roles.

Users with these workflow roles can interact with glossary assets that are under development. The following table shows the workflow roles and the main tasks that are associated with each of these roles.

Table 1. Workflow roles and tasks
Users with this workflow role ...	... can do these tasks with glossary assets
Editor	Create, edit, and delete assets, and send assets for approval
Reviewer	Review assets under development
Approver	Approve assets for publication
Publisher	Publish approved assets

Before the workflow feature can be used, a user with the Information Governance Catalog Glossary Administrator role must assign at least one workflow role to at least one other user. Multiple users can be assigned to any workflow role. Follow these steps:

Enable the workflow feature.
Assign workflow roles to the users.
Optional: Assign catalog permissions or assign glossary development permissions to those users. After you assign workflow roles to users, you can restrict user access to glossary assets in the catalog or in the development glossary. If you do not assign any access permissions, all users with an Information Governance Catalog role can access all glossary assets.
Note that catalog permissions apply to categories regardless of whether workflow is enabled.

Example

Suppose that the catalog contains the categories Finance and Personnel. Some business users need access to the Finance category but must be denied access to the Personnel category. Other business users need access to the Personnel category but must be denied access to the Finance category. You can use both workflow roles and catalog permissions so that different users can be an Editor, Reviewer, Approver, and Publisher for specific categories. You do these steps:

Enable the workflow feature in InfoSphere Information Governance Catalog.
Assign workflow roles to each business user.
Restrict access to the categories Finance and Personnel in the development glossary. To business users who are in the Finance department, you assign access permission to the Finance category. Likewise, to business users who are in the Personnel department, you assign access permission to the Personnel category. As a result, members of the Finance department cannot access the Personnel category. Similarly, members of the Personnel department cannot access the Finance category.