Roles In VIA®
Zach Compton
Joanna Miller
Roles in VIA® can be used to control what a user can see and what they can do within the system. Roles are defined in the administration screen and assigned to user accounts, groups and boards. The following instructions will walk your through managing roles and assigning them to different areas of the system.
Managing Roles
To add, edit or remove a role you will need to access the administration section of VIA®. Login to VIA® and click on the menu next to your avatar to access the context menu. You should see an Admin option. If you do not have this option your user account is not setup as an administrator; contact your system administrator to make changes to your account in order to access this section of VIA®.
- Once you have opened the administration screen click on roles on the left side of the screen:
- To create a new role press the +Add Role button on the right side of the screen. You will be asked to provide a Role Name and a Role Description. When you are done press Save. To edit a role click on the role dropdown field to choose the role you would like to adjust. NOTE: When the screen initially opens you will be viewing the Global default role. Make sure you have the correct role selected before you continue.
- When you have selected the correct Role you will see a number of header sections. To see the rights within each header you can click on the header name to expand it out. There is a search field on the top right section of each of the headers. You can use this search to filter down to specific settings.
- The rights in VIA® have been broken down into various categories:
- Board Types - Categories such as Segment, Driver, Order, Carrier, Location, Quote, Event etc. control what actions you can perform on specific types of boards. For example, you can control if a user can view a drivers hire date and you can control if a user can edit the driver hire date.
- Sidebar - This controls the menu that appears throughout the VIA® system on the right side of the screen. These setting will allow you to control if a user can access any of these menu items. For example, if you do not want a user to be able to assign members to boards you can uncheck this option and they will not see that menu item in the sidebar.
- Administration - This section controls which areas of the administration screen a user can access. If you have a user that you want to make an user administrator only (they are not to have access to ramps or boards for example) you can restrict which administration screens a user can access. NOTE: In order for this section to apply the user will need to have access to the admin section of VIA®. If they are not marked as an administrator they will not be effected by these settings.
- Mobile - In the mobile role setting you can control what a user can do when logged into the mobile app. These setting include the ability to view and edit various load dimensions and the ability to upload attachments using the mobile application.
- General - This section of the role configuration screen controls settings that are universal throughout the system. From here you can control if someone can archive cards, move cards between lists, add and remove attachments from cards and create conversations.
- Ramps - There is a ramps section where you can control which ramps a user will be able to access. This assumes that the user is marked as an administrator and that they have administrator access to the ramps section.
When you have finished making all your changes click the save role button on the top right side of the screen.
Assigning Roles Throughout VIA®
Follow this guide to assign roles throughout VIA®.
Once you have created your roles in VIA® there are multiple areas where you can assign them. A general rule is that the role assigned to the user in VIA® will determine their rights throughout the system. There are some exceptions that will trump the user defined role. Board defined roles will override any roles assigned to the user.
Assigning Roles to Users
Each user in VIA® will have roles assigned to them. These roles will determine what users can do in the system such as attach files to cards or move cards between lists. Assigning a role to a user is done when the user is created. You can edit a role by opening up the admin menu (click on your name on the top right side of the VIA® screen and choose admin) and then selecting users in the admin menu that runs on the left side of the screen. On the main screen locate the user you want to edit and click on the edit button
There are two fields on the user screen related to the Roles. The first is the permission role. This field will define the rights that the user has in every section of the system other than the administration screen. The second field titles Admin Permissions Role will set the administration rights for the user. The fields have been separated so that you can assign the admin rights separately from the regular user roles. NOTE when you first create a user they will have None listed as the roles. This means that they will be assigned the Global role. To change the role a user has been assigned click on the field and a drop down list will appear with all options for role selection.
Assigning Roles to Groups/Board
The roles that you assign to a user in their user profile will flow to all areas of the system; however, you can override a users role from within specific groups and on boards. To learn how to create a group see the link for creating groups in this documentation. At the bottom of each group configuration screen there is a section where you can define a role
In the above example, the users will have access to the carrier role on the Billing Customer's board. If they had different rights assigned the the user this Carrier role will override them for this specific board.
Utilizing groups can allow you to assign multiple users to a number of boards and assign a specific role to each of these users on the boards defined in the group screen. If you choose to manually add users to groups you can also alter this role setting on a user by user basis per board. To see how this works login to VIA® and open a board that you want to either assign a user to or alter an existing users permission. Open the slide out menu on the right side of the screen and select the members menu item
You can use the + to search for and add new members if the user you want to edit is not already a member of the board. Once you have your member on the board you can left click on the square that represents the user to bring up a menu listing.
By default, the user will have none selected for the permissions which means that they will carry the same role in this board as the role they have assigned to them in the user administration screen. If you would like the user to have a different role for this specific board you can assign that in this section. Click on the change permission option and you will see a listing of all the roles in the system. Choose the role you want to assign the user.
Hierarchy of How Permissions are Assigned Throughout the System
The Global role supersedes all other permissions. If something is denied at a global level then it overrides anything specific that you may have set on a custom defined role. For example, if you uncheck Drag and Drop to Archive Cards in the global role, then nobody who uses the system will be able to drag cards to the top of the screen to archive them.
The lowest Level of permissions is the role given to the users. Assuming that the user has not been added to any groups or had their permissions changed on a board they have access too. The role they have as a user will take effect.
The next level of permissions if the board level role. What role have set at the board level, overrides the user role if they are different. For example, my user can have Role #1 assigned to them as a user; however, they can have Role #2 assigned to them for a specific board (you can see this in the member side menu of a board).
Groups will allow you to set the permissions for one or more users on a board in bulk. So, if you have 10 users that you want to put on your orders board with a permission of Customer_Service you can do that for all of them at once. This role setting only take effect when you save the role. It will not revert any role settings you make after you save the group setting. If you go back to a group and change the permission then it will update the permission for all the users in the group on the boards in the group. Here is an example of how you would use groups to set board permissions. Say you had a user With Role #1 on their user account settings. Then you added them to Group A which gave access to the Orders board and had a role setting of Role #2 . Your user would now have a permissions setting of Role #2 on the Orders Board. If you added your user to another group after that Group B that also had the orders board in the group but with a Role Setting of Roel #3 then your users permissions setting on the Orders Board would be changed to Role #2.
Here is the hierarchy from lowest to highest:
User permissions - apply if users are not part of any groups that have different permission levels, and their board access says none and there are no Global restrictions
Board Permission - If the board has a different permission than the user has then the system will use the board permission over the user permission. The global restrictions still overrides these
Global Permissions - If you restrict something in the global permission then it doesn’t matter what the individual roles say nobody can perform the action.