Authority Manager: 2011 User Interface Enhancements

Some changes are coming to the Authority Manager application and Reports aimed at improving the user experience, showing more  assignment information, and allowing users to see additional privilege group data.

Improved User Experience

Authority Manager's appearance is now based on Stanford's web standard and provides a more logical layout and improved navigation:

• All actions are available on the left under Manage Authority
• Informational links to additional web sites may be found under the Help menu.
• All privilege information is displayed in the main middle section of each page.
• Extensive privilege lists are collapsed and may be expanded as needed by clicking "[+] Show More Rows"

Improved Authority Reports and Layout

Additional changes were made to the existing Authority Reports, including:

• Improved Authority Reports layout
• Search-ahead feature for Authority Reports by SUNet ID and by Organization
• Improved Privilege Group Report - now includes description, administrators, and role information

Other Changes

Other changes include an improved Privilege Group tab and updated help pages and tutorial.

Questions and Answers Related to these Authority Manager changes:

1. Where is "acting as ... " ?
   "Proxy" was previously also referred to as "Acting as" within some parts of Authority Manager. For consistency going forward, references to "acting as" have been removed and the application now uses the term "proxy" exclusively.
   
   
2. Where did all my privileges go, not all of them are showing ?
   To enhance usability, long privilege lists now initially display in a "collapsed" state with just the first four privileges showing. Click on the "[+] Show More Rows" link at the bottom of the section to expand and view the complete list.
   
   
3. Why does the same inherited privilege show more than once?
   Many inherited privileges are associated with more than one parent privilege. If someone assigns you more than one privilege with the same inherited privilege you will see all the inherited privileges, including duplicates. You will also see that each inherited privilege has a different parent privilege - click on the more link to see all of the details.
   


4. What is a "privilege group" and how are they created?
   A privilege group is typically used to control access to Stanford applications. Privilege groups are created in one of two ways; they may be created and populated automatically by a central system, or they may be manually created and populated using Workgroup Manager. stanford:staff is an example of a system-assigned privilege group; every university employee (excluding faculty) is a  member of this privilege group by default.
   


5. What is the difference between a privilege group and an authority manager assignment?
   The fundamental difference is access versus authentication. Privilege groups usually provide access to applications or web sites. Authority Manager assignments determine what you can do once logged in to an application.