Login/Restricting Info Access

[Annette Marie]

Hello. I am very new to FM and working on my first database with it. Basically, I have a database that several users will be accessing. I have found where to create users and set permission levels, ie, full, data entry, etc.

The database will be used by different people to enter services and hours that clients recieve for a given month. It is ok to have the full client list available to them when they go to enter information, but how to I get it to only show reports relevent to them? Or is that even possible? Basically, I'm going to create a report (when I figure out how to do that) which will summarise what that client received for the month. But because they can avail of services from more than one provider, when a user opens the report to see the full month, I only want them to be able to see the services provided by them.

Did I make that totally confusing? Sorry I hope not. Also, if someone can give me an idea/direct me to a simple lamens term explanation of how to create reports with specific criteria entered at the time of running the report I'd appreciate it so much. I.e. I want a report that summarizes what a client received in the month of August so when I open that specific report it prompts me for the client name and the month I'm looking for.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

[bcooney]

Hello Annette Marie,

One way to achieve your goal is to create a field in each table, especially the Services table, that contains the account created. This is easily achieved with a text field that has the entry options of Account Created. Now each record is "stamped," so to speak, with its creator.

A drawback of this method is that often records are not created by the person to whom you want to assign the service. For instance, an admin assistant. So, what you do then is to specifically store the ID of the person who provided the service. That must be a data entry field populated by a user when the service record is created. Then, you can build a reporting routine that only finds the records for that user by finding by their ID. You can prompt for client, month and year by simply taking the user to a Services layout in Find Mode.

I often capture the users ID in an Open Script. I have a Staff table with at least the User's Name, ID and AccountName. The Open Script finds in that Staff table where Get(AccountName) = AccountName. Now I've found their Staff record. I "publish" to a global field, gUserID. If you had a record access rule where view of Services records is allowed only if gUserID = StaffProvidedByID, you'll limit what service records they can see.

I feel that a review of Record Level Access rules and how to use Find mode will help you.

hth,

Barbara

PS:May I suggest a Services Table (each Service has an ID), a value list created from this table using ID and ServiceName, a Client Table, and a join table between the two that captures the combinations of Client and Service, simply storing at minimum, the ServiceID and ClientID.

Edited September 13, 2010 by Guest

[Simon UK]

Hi Barbara,

Thinking along same lines as your recommendation could if i wanted to restrict users from a particilar company to only see 'their company' data could I create a 'company' table that contains fields - user id, company name, company number ... etc, save the company number as a variable in an open script like you suggested and then auto populate with this variable whenever a new record is being created or subsequently viewed.

Would I have any issues with variable name if there were more than one user in the database at once?

Or would there be a better way of achieving same result, i.e. multiple users from different companies only being able to access their own company data?

Regards,

Simon