Restrict access to important confidential information within activeCollab
How would you store confidential documents and information within activeCollab?
Everyone involved with a project can see “normal” items. You can create a private item that is visible only to people who have the “can_see_private_objects” privilege. But then they can see any private object in the project.
How would you deal with…
- FTP, Control Panel and Server Account details that you want only project leader to see?
- Project Agreement that only the client should see?
- Contract with your sub contractor?
- Documents from HR appraisals and reviews?
- Payment followups?
You can create new projects and invite only those people that you want to share these details with. You may use Private objects like we mentioned earlier. But what if you could allow only certain people for certain items? And what if you could do this in your current, natural activeCollab workflow?
That’s what Confidential Items module is for
How does Confidential Items module work?
- With this module, you now get an additional visibility level for project items. Along with Normal and Private, you now have “Confidential” visibility.
- Any confidential item (ticket, page, discussion or file) can be accessed only by people who are assigned or subscribed to it. Of course, Administrators can access these items too.
- Child items – tasks, time records, comments and attachments – also become confidential. Non assigned / subscribed users can not access these items even if they guess the URL and enter it directly.
- Confidential items can be created by users who have the “can_see_private_objects” right. Other people can not create confidential items. But may be assigned / subscribed to confidential items.
- Confidential items are completely invisible to people who do not have access to them. If you have seven people on a project and assign two on a confidential item, only those two can see the item. Others will see no trace of it. And even the two can see it only from the list of tickets / discussions / pages / files.
Interested? See how MIB and Apps Magnet saved our galaxy using Confidential Items Module
Confidential Items module works with Files within a project, but not the global Docs. Here’s a tutorial that explains how you can achieve this (and why it’s not possible to do with activeCollab native).
Confidential Items and activeCollab 3
Confidential Items module for activeCollab 3 works much the same way as it works in activeCollab 2. Only administrators and people who are assigned to or subscribed to a confidential Task / File / Discussion, can access it. All other people will not be able to access the confidential item.
Here are two screenshots that show how this works.
Creating a confidential task – just mark the visibility as confidential
Confidential Items show with a “safe locker” icon
The current version for activeCollab 3 is the initial version. The core confidentiality functions work fine, but confidential items may appear in time reports / assignments filters.
Though – even if they appear somewhere, clicking on a confidential item will result in a permissions error if the logged in user does not have access to it.
Known Limitations / Issues
activeCollab 3
- Confidential Items will not be visible in recent activities or search results.
- If search index / activity logs were rebuilt, confidential item related entries may take up to a day to disappear (or when the daily scheduled task runs)
- Confidential Items are visible in Time & Expense Reports. Clicking on an item will result in an error for people who don’t have access to it.
- Confidential Items are visible through Assignments filters. Clicking on an item will result in an error for people who don’t have access to it.
activeCollab 2
- Only people who have “can_see_private_objects” will get an option to mark an item as confidential.
- activeCollab adds Project Leader as a subscriber to items by default. So Project Leader can see confidential items. Unsubscribe the leader if you do not want them to see this item.
- Confidential items will not appear in Recent Activities, Time Reports, Planning or Reports modules etc.
- If you uninstall Confidential Items module, all items that were previously confidential, will become private.
- If you select default visibility as “Confidential” while creating a project, the project will still have “Normal” as default visibility.
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