Giving partial access to layout design??

[Dan-A]

Hi All,

Is there a way to allow users to design new

layouts... (lists & forms) for printing only?

But at the same time not giving them access to the ones already created?

(that way i would know that the original lists & templates are protected)

Thanks

--Dan

[HOnza]

Under Access Privileges/Groups, create two or more groups. Then under Access Privileges/Overview, assign users to groups, and then for each individual group you can specify access level to individual layouts (read/write, read-only, no access).

But note that making a layout read-only you not only protect the layout from being modified, but you make also the layout fields read-only in Browse mode.

I have solved this in my solution by creating a special password and group for designing layouts. This special group did not have access to anything except designing custom layouts.

HOnza

[CobaltSky]

Hello Dan and HOnza,

Another alternative is to provide a second file. Lock down the main file and restruct access to design layouts, but give your users layout design access to the second file.

Then you will need to provide scripts and/or relationships which will efficiently transfer the data for a report to the second file when required, so that users can seamlessly trigger a report from the main file, yet have it print from a layout in the other file, to which they have layout access.

This approach can be made to work quite well, providing the number of records appearing on a report is typically hundreds or less (rather than thousands) given that there are a couple of additional steps involved in scripting the import of records to the reports file prior to printing. However in some contexts this approach can work quite well.

Another advantage of the two-file approach is that the second file can be stripped down to include only the fields that may be required for reporting. That way, when adding fields to layouts, the user will not have to wade through a host of global fields, calculation fields and other developer-specific compomponents in their search for the fields which hold their data.