Defining user/group fields

Define a user/group field by setting the data type, display type, and defining additional settings on profiles.

Before you begin

Learn about the data type. For more information, see Data types.

Procedure

  1. Define basic information about the field. For more information, see Defining fields and adding them to field groups.
  2. Select User/Group in Data Type.
  3. Select a Display Type.
    Valid values for user/group fields are:
    • Group Selector

      Allows the selection of a single user group.

    • Multi-valued Group Selector

      Allows the selection of multiple user groups.

    • Multi-valued User Selector

      Allows the selection of multiple users.

    • Multi-valued User/Group Selector

      Allows the selection of multiple users and/or groups.

    • User Selector

      Allows the selection of a single user.

    • User/Group Selector

      Allows the selection of a single user or group.

  4. Finish defining the field. For more information, see Defining fields and adding them to field groups.

What to do next

Improve the performance of user/group fields by setting additional fields on profiles.

If your deployment has a large number of users, the performance of the User Selector or the Multi-Valued User Selector in opening and loading data may be sluggish. One way to improve the performance of the User Selector or the Multi-Valued User Selector is to configure it so it only retrieves users that have permission on the object being edited. You do this by setting Minimum Access on profiles.

The supplied profiles in the IBM OpenPages with Watson application are configured such that the User Selector or Multi-Valued User Selector pop-up retrieves all users in the system - including some application users who do not have security permissions on the selected object. This might result in the assignment of a user as owner on an object when the user does not have read access on the object.

Set Minimum Access to restrict the set of users retrieved by the User Selector or the Multi-Valued User Selector to those users that have access permissions on the object being edited at the time.

Click Settings menu > Solution Configuration > Profiles. Select a profile to modify and a user/group field. Set the following values:

Table 1. Additional selector settings
Setting Description
Include Disabled Allows or disallows disabled user accounts to be included in a selector listing.

If the Include Disabled value is set to:

  • True - disabled user accounts are included in the selector listing. When this setting is selected, the Minimum Access setting is disabled. A value of True, when used in combination with a Starting Group value that contains many users, can result in slower search performance.
  • False - disabled user accounts are excluded from the selector listing. When this setting is selected, the Minimum Access setting is enabled.

This setting generally applies to User (not Group) selectors.
Starting Group Controls which group displays at the beginning of the selection hierarchy.

If the Starting Group value is blank, selectors search the system for all users and/or groups, depending on the display type. A blank Starting Group value used in combination with an Include Disabled value of True can result in improved search performance.

To select a starting group, click the group icon and select a valid group name from the selector window.

For example, if you are using role-based security, you could select the Security Domains group, for non role-based security, you could select the Workflow, Reporting and Others group.
Include Subgroups Controls whether subgroups are included or excluded from the User selector listing.
Note: This setting applies only to the User/Group and Group selectors.

If the Include Subgroups value is set to:

  • True - subgroups are included in the selector listing.
  • False - subgroups are excluded from the selector listing.

Minimum Access

  • Read
  • Write
  • Delete
  • Associate

This setting is enabled only if the Include Disabled value is set to False. This setting allows you to filter users based on access control list settings on an object’s folder.

For example, you want to limit the number of users who can be assigned as a Process "Cycle Owner", which is an object field with a user selector display type for the Process object. Because you previously set up an access control list (ACL) for one or more groups or users to the Process folder, you can use the Minimum Access setting to filter the list of users. If you only wanted users with "Delete" permissions to be displayed on the user selector list, you can select the "Delete" Minimum Access setting to filter and display only those users with "Delete" ACL permissions.

If the Read box is:

  • Selected - only users with Read access are displayed on the user list.
  • Cleared - no filtering occurs.

If the Write box is:

  • Selected - only users with Write access are displayed on the user list.
  • Cleared - no filtering occurs.

If the Delete box is:

  • Selected - only users with Delete access are displayed on the user list.
  • Cleared - no filtering occurs.

If the Associate box is:

  • Selected - only users with Associate access are displayed on the user list.
  • Cleared - no filtering occurs.