By using access rights in Optimizely Content Management System (CMS), you can control the content that a website visitor sees, and what editors can do and where they can do it in the content structure. For example, you may give members of the marketing department access to edit the website marketing material that other company users should not edit. You can set access rights for different types of content, such as pages, blocks, images and documents in the navigation and assets panes.
You can also use access rights together with audiences and give an audience from a local 10-mile radius access to an advertisement page.
Access rights are normally managed from the administration view in CMS, but you can give editors the right to manage access rights for a single page in edit view.
Video: Manage access rights
Video tutorial: Manage access rights (6:39 minutes)
Different types of access
You can grant or deny the following types of access to users and groups: Read, Create, Change, Delete, Publish, and Administer.
| Access right | Description |
|---|---|
| Read | The user or group can access the content as a reader; otherwise the content is invisible. |
| Create | The user or group can create content under the content item on which this right is set. |
| Change | The user or group can access the content to modify it. Typically, Create and Change are set together but there may be cases where you want someone to modify created content (but not create their own content), or vice versa. |
| Delete | The user or group can delete the content. |
| Publish | The user or group can publish the content. |
| Administer | The user or group can create and edit approval sequences, and set access rights and language properties on individual content items from edit view for content given this access.
This does not provide access to admin view. To access admin view, you need to be a member of the WebAdmins group, see Built-in user groups). |
Access rights to assets
Just as for pages, access rights can be applied to assets, such as folders, blocks and media, in the content structure. You can define specific access rights from the "Root" level and all the way down, including the Recycle bin (Trash) and For All Sites that stores blocks and media. Blocks and media share the same folder structure.
Editors must have Create access rights to the global or site-specific folder under For All Sites/For This Site where they want to upload an image or create a block, or to the current page when adding assets to the local For This Page folder. If media should be automatically published when they are uploaded, editors who upload must have Publish access rights, either to the global or site-specific folder or to the page, if media are uploaded to the local folder.
See Folders for a description of global, site-specific, and local folders.
Should I set access rights for a single user or for a group?
You can set access rights to content for a single user. For example, you can set the access rights so only Abbie (and system administrators) can edit the Book a Demo page. You can add Abbie to any number of pages and content, and set Abbie's access rights to each content item the same (or differently) for each page.
If you have a number of users that need common access to content, managing access rights on a user-by-user basis can be complex. Create user groups that have similar access needs, add the users to each user group, and then use the user group to set access rights to content. This lets you manage access rights more easily. You can add a user to one or more groups.
For example, add users Abbie, Erin, and Reid to a Marketing user group and give access rights to any number of pages and content to the Marketing group instead of each individual. To add Eddie to all of the Marketing content, (or remove Abbie), you modify the Marketing user group. You do not have to visit each page or content item to update each individual user's access rights.
Built-in user groups
By default, Optimizely CMS has built-in user groups that align with user roles. You can extend predefined groups and roles; see Managing users and user groups.
| Group | Description |
|---|---|
| Administrators | Comes from Windows and is defined when the website is created. An administrator can access all parts of the system, and can edit all website content. Often, administrators are developers setting up or maintaining the website. |
| WebAdmins | Comes with Optimizely and can access both admin and edit views and the administration interfaces for add-ons and audiences. To use this group, you must add it through Settings > Access Rights > Administer Groups > WebAdmins.
Membership in WebAdmins does not provide editing access in the content structure by default. In most cases, only a few system administrators or "super users" belong to this group. |
| WebEditors | Comes with Optimizely and can access the editing view. To use this group, you must add it through Settings > Access Rights > Administer Groups > WebEditors. Add users to this group who need access to the edit view. Then add the users to other groups to give them specific edit rights to content. On large websites, editors are often organized in groups according to content structure or languages. |
| Everyone | Comes from Windows and provides "anonymous" visitors with read access to website content. All unregistered visitors to a public website are anonymous, meaning that they cannot be identified by the system. Removing access rights for the Everyone group, requires login to access content even if it is published. |
Setting access rights
- Go to Settings > Access Rights > Set Access Rights. The Set Access view appears with a content tree structure of the website.
- Click a node in the content tree (for example, Alloy Track). Typically, a content item shows Administrators (with all access rights) and Everyone (with Read only access rights). You can change these rights or add new users or groups.
- If the users or groups are inactive (grayed out) for a content item, then the content item inherits the access rights of its parent content item. To set access rights for this content item, clear the Inherit settings from parent item check box.
- To add settings to the selected node's subitems without affecting their existing settings, select the Apply settings for all subitems; see section Setting access rights for all subitems below.
- Select Settings > Access Rights > Manage Users.
- Click Create User (or select a user from the list). You can enter a name or email address in the search field to find a specific user or group.
- Go to Settings > Access Rights > Set Access Rights and select Add Users/Groups. A list of available users and groups appears.
- Modify the access rights settings as you want them and click Save Access Rights. The users or groups appear in the Set Access Rights view for the selected content tree item.
Setting inheritance for content subitems
Content inherits access rights from its closest parent item by default. When you set access rights for a content item, the rights apply to it and all subitems that have a selected Inherit settings from parent item option; subitems with this option cleared are not affected. For example, Alloy Plan, Alloy Track, and Alloy Meet all have the same access rights because they inherit the access rights from the Start page.
- If you break inheritance for Alloy Meet and change the access rights on it, the access rights become different from the parent (Start) and its two siblings (Alloy Plan and Alloy Track).
- If you then add a Marketing group group to Start, Alloy Plan and Allow Track inherit the Marketing group (because inheritance is selected) but Alloy Meet does not because its inheritance is unselected.
The following image shows the access rights for the Alloy Track content; it will not inherit from the parent item and any changes of access rights on Marketing will not be pushed to subitems unless they have the Inherit settings from parent item option selected.
Campaigns is a subitem of Alloy Track. It has Inherit settings from parent item selected, so the access rights are identical to that of the Alloy Track content item.
Book a demo is also a subitem of Alloy Track, but contrary to Campaigns, it has Inherit settings from parent item cleared, so its access rights are not the same as the parent content item.
Setting access rights for all subitems
Selecting the Apply settings for all subitems check box applies the access rights of the parent item to all its subitems, even if a subitem has inheritance cleared. The option adds settings to a subitem that it did not have before and does not change or remove any existing settings on the subitem.
For example, the Alloy Track content item has Abbie as a user with access rights.
When you select Apply settings for all subitems, Abbie is added as a user with access rights to Book a demo because Abbie is part of the Alloy Track content item's access rights. Reid, who already had access rights to Book a demo, remains on the list of access rights, unchanged.
If a parent item and a non-inheriting subitem have the same user or group, and the access rights for the user or group differ between the parent and the subitem, the parent's settings are applied when you select Apply Settings for all subitems. For example:
- If the Alloy Track parent item has user Abbie with only Read access set, and Book a Demo has user Abbie with all access rights set, then Apply Settings for all subitems resets Abbie's access rights on Book a Demo to only Read access.
- Conversely, if Alloy Track has user Abbie with all access rights, and the subitem has user Abbie with only Read access, Apply Settings for all subitems gives user Abbie all access rights on the subitem.
Removing a user or group from the access rights list
To remove a user or group from the access list, clear all of the access rights for that user or group and click Save.
Using an audience in an access rights list
Audiences are used by the personalization feature, and you need administration access rights to manage audiences. If you want an editor to manage audiences without providing access to the entire admin view, you can make the editor a member of AudienceAdmins. This group provides access only to the Audience option in the top menu. AudienceAdmins comes with Optimizely but you must add it through Settings > Access Rights > Administer Groups > Create Group > AudienceAdmins.
You can set specific access rights for audiences, letting them view specific "hidden" content that is not otherwise publicly available. For example, you may want only members of the Visitors from London audience to have access to a Family day at the zoo page with a discount coupon.
This feature is useful if you want to create a "customer area" for registered customers on your website. Being a member of a audience requires a registration and login to access the content.
- Go to Settings > Access Rights > Set Access Rights.
- Select a node in the content tree.
- Click Add Users/Groups.
- Select Audiences to view available audiences.
- Select an audience and click OK.
Access rights for languages
If your website has content in multiple languages, you can define access rights for languages so editors can create content only in languages to which they have access. Enabled languages are displayed in the Config view, but only users with access rights to a language can create and edit content in that language. See Website languages.
Access rights for the CMS platform
See Permissions for more information about how to manage access rights for other parts of the Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) platform.
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