Privileges in WEBCON BPS 2019 Standalone (Part 1)

This article is the first part of a series of articles about permissions in WEBCON BPS. I will focus on Standalone installation (without SharePoint). Permissions related to WEBCON BPS is a very broad topic. In every part of this series, I will try to describe in an understandable way how permissions work. This part will be devoted to the application layer.

Application layer? So what are other layers?

WEBCON BPS 2019 introduces applications, which are nothing else than the presentation level of the group of processes. The application layer can be compared to the SharePoint subsite. With granted privileges, we can open site, see site structure, but without proper privileges, the SWE report will be empty and workflow starters will not be available. To be able to see data, user should have privileges at data layer.

So at this point we can define two main privilege levels:

• Application layer
  • Access to portal
  • Access to an application (but no data in it)
  • Configuration application in the Studio (Lite mode)
• Data layer
  • Access to data (workflow elements)
  • See data in SWE web parts
  • Starting new workflows

Application structure

To discuss the permission thread, we must first describe the application structure. Generic application structure is described below.

• A single application can contain one or more processes
• A single process consists of one or more document workflows
• Each document flow can be associated with one or more form types
• Each of the form types can be used as part of several workflows

A simplified example of the structure of a single app may look like this:

Example of single application

Let’s try to illustrate the diagram above with some specific application example.

Let’s say we have a document legislation application. Within the application we have 3 processes. First, the document is created by the appropriate people. The created document can be a new document or an update of an existing document. This is our first process – ” Document preparation” with two separate flows depending on the document type. Then designated persons verify the created documents as part of the “Document validation” process. This is a single flow process with one form type. Finally, the document goes to the document archive, where there is a division into public and confidential document. For this purpose we may create “Document registry” process.

Our example application has the following structure:

• Application – Document legislation
  • Process 1 – Document preparation
    • Workflow 1 – New Document
      • Form Type 1 – Document preparation
    • Workflow 2 – Document update
      • Form Type 1 – Document preparation
  • Process 2 – Document validation
    • Workflow 1 – Document validation
      • Form Type 1 – Document validation
  • Process 3 – Document registry
    • Workflow 1 – Document registry
      • Form Type 1 – Confidential
      • Form Type 2 – Public

As we can see, in our example two different workflows (New Document and Document update) use the same form type (Document preparation). Also, the single workflow (Document registry) uses two form types (Confidential and Public).

Application privileges

As part of the permissions at the applicationlayer we have 4 levels of permissions:

• Read-Only
  • Allow users to access the application.
  • If the user has no privileges to any application, WEBCON BPS Portal will not be accessible for him.
• Metadata access
  • Grant user privileges to form field names.
  • Useful for users who create word Add-In templates
• Portal designer
  • Allow user creating and editing Portal for this application (web only)
• Application administrator
  • Allow user to modify process with WEBCON BPS Designer Studio
  • Allow user to edit Portal for this application (web and studio)

Summary

The new approach of applications in WEBCON 2019 allows for the comprehensive creation of complex applications consisting of many processes. Thanks to a good understanding of how permissions work, the WEBCON system administrator can easier than before develop solutions for business. Now also administrator may delegate some of his duties (such as maintaining WEBCON processes and portal creation) to the right users. More general information about changes in privileges you may find on official WEBCON technical blog: https://howto.webcon.com/privileges-in-webcon-bps-2019/

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