This must be a basic question but...

[DrugBust]

I've made a database (FMP5) for use with multiple groups of people. I set groups and passwords for each group, because I only want certain groups to view and edit certain things. This works fine when I'm not sharing or if I were only using one computer for all of these groups. But I'm serving this page over a dedicated IP on a school district, and I need the same type of functionality over the internet. For instance, if I want only teachers to view and edit a certain record, how do do that? Same with LMC staff, and Principals accross the district. They should only be able to access my dataase over the net and enter certain information, and not be able to mess with the other records. I have it set up using Web Companion and it works, but like I said, everyone can edit evreything, when I want to have certain things left unavailiable to certain people. can I do this on-line using passwords?

I'm REALLy new at filemaker, and I'm in serious need of help. I've been everywhere trying to find an answer to this but I can't find any help. So please, any advice would be greatly appreciated. THANKS!!

[ May 24, 2001: Message edited by: DrugBust ]

[flexistentialism]

For complete security you could use realm based control and have the teacher, student and admin record update or new record format files in different folders on your webserver.

You would then have a simple link to the URL of the page in it's folder at which piont the user will be required to supply a username and password by the webserver. The general search pages to view the record could be in a folder that can be accessed by all.

[proton]

DrugBust,

If you want to do this over the web, you can put a find at the top of every page that shows records. Each group has a group name and a password that identifies it as you said. When a member of the group accesses the database via the web, they have to supply the username and password.

When they enter records, you should create field(s) that specify who created the record (Group Teachers, or group LMC, etc.). That way one knows which records belong to whom. Now when they log in, and they go to the edit page or whatever, you have the find tag at the top of the form (of type hidden) and if performs a hidden find by the group on the field you specified (using their login name which is the group name I assume). So if a teacher opens an edit page, it automatically does a find and displays only records attributed to teacher.

If you also have a find page, you have to include this hidden tag on it as well. So they can look for records they entered for a specific period, but secretly it also looks for only their records. Understand?

[flexistentialism]

What proton has said will work great for records that you only want one group to have update access to.

But I understood from your question that in some cases you may want everyone to have read access to the SAME records but different people to be able to edit different parts of the SAME record. (eg exam results, timetables, extra curricular activities booking etc.)

Because you want all groups to have edit / update priviledges on some records but different bits of that same record you can either split the records up accross multiple databases and assign the priviledges to each of the databases and thus each part of the record...... or .......a simpler stratergy is to resrict access to the format files that do the updating and keep the record on one database. Using realm security is easy (with WebSTAR it is!) you crate the realms (folders in your web root folder), create the users and assign the realms to the users. I assume this would be similar on IIS etc but using twice as many dialog boxes (he he ).

I produce web recruitment site and I often have the problem of multiple people accessing / updating the same record but different bits eg candidate, third party response management / agency company and the client.

The easiest way I found to do this is use realm based security to protect and sp[lit the format files.

You must remember to align the database and webserver usernames and passwords though because the browser will hold these for the session.

[proton]

quote:

---

Originally posted by flexistentialism:

What proton has said will work great for records that you only want one group to have update access to.

But I understood from your question that in some cases you may want everyone to have read access to the SAME records but different people to be able to edit different parts of the SAME record. (eg exam results, timetables, extra curricular activities booking etc.)

Because you want all groups to have edit / update priviledges on some records but different bits of that same record you can either split the records up accross multiple databases and assign the priviledges to each of the databases and thus each part of the record...... or .......a simpler stratergy is to resrict access to the format files that do the updating and keep the record on one database. Using realm security is easy (with WebSTAR it is!) you crate the realms (folders in your web root folder), create the users and assign the realms to the users. I assume this would be similar on IIS etc but using twice as many dialog boxes (he he

).

I produce web recruitment site and I often have the problem of multiple people accessing / updating the same record but different bits eg candidate, third party response management / agency company and the client.

The easiest way I found to do this is use realm based security to protect and sp[lit the format files.

You must remember to align the database and webserver usernames and passwords though because the browser will hold these for the session.

---

DrugBust,

hahahaha..sorry, I misinterpreted the question. Flexistentialism is right. You want certain people to access certain parts of a record. Well if that is the case, then you can also do that, but in a simpler way than using realms and so on.

All you do is in the edit format files, use If statements. You can use If statements to display certain fields based on satisfying a condition. So it will say IF group X, and you display the fields a,b,c in edit mode (i.e. a text box), but fields d,e,f in display mode (i.e. just shows data); and you can say IF group Y, and you display fields a,b,c, in display mode, and fields d,e,f, in edit mode; and you can keep doing that for all the groups. That way, you minimise the number of format files you have and having them in different locations, because when a user loads the page, it determines which group he belongs to and displays the appropriate fields in the appropriate format.

You can even combine the two methods. Whereby if finds only records that that person should have access to, and ALSO only allows them to edit certain fields. Hope you understand this. If I'm still off flexistentialism let me know okay?

[flexistentialism]

Sounds cool to me! One thing I like about FMPro is there is normally more than one way to get round a problem.