Last updated: July 11, 2022
Anyone who has opted for a professional IT documentation solution also knows that a lot of information accumulates in one central location. Likely, everyone is aware of the fact that not all stored information should be made available to everyone. Nevertheless, every now and then it is necessary to grant different people access to this inventory data and reports. But is it necessary to allocate them comprehensive access in every case?
User management and Docusnap
To answer the question right away: No!
In Docusnap, there are different ways for individuals to gain access to certain information from the inventory data. Reports can be generated on a scheduled basis and sent to different mail recipients automatically. This has the advantage that the recipient does not need access rights or a corresponding short briefing regarding Docusnap. The information is conveniently delivered in the selected format. This can be a PDF or an Excel file, for example.
The disadvantage of this approach, however, unveils when the scope or output format needs to be changed. For example, the requests might change or more data is desired in the report. There are many reasons why a standardized report might not meet all needs.
If you now rigorously restrict access and do not allow any access except by a few selected employees, you quickly become the service interface between the requesting persons and the Docusnap database. But this doesn’t have to happen. With a practical user authorization system and flexible role assignment, certain areas from the documentation can be safely transferred to other departments and colleagues.
Creating users in Docusnap is the first step
In smaller companies, it may be sufficient to decide whether someone has access or not. But in most companies, creating a user account alone is not enough. Here, granular subdivision must also be present in an IT documentation. With user management, we determine who has access to Docusnap. With role assignment, we delineate which possibilities an existing user may have.
To explain it in a hypothetical example, let’s just assume that the boss of a company wants to have access to certain data himself. Most of the time, this is not so hypothetical, but occurs relatively often. In any case, even the most restrictive administrators will have to give in to these requests and provide other people with the appropriate access.
This is supposed to sound a bit harsh: One must never forget that with a professional documentation and inventory solution, one is not just bringing home a tool to create an overview. If you take advantage of the software’s potential, many important points are also realized via it. For example, the creation of emergency manuals, restart plans, proper license management, the storage of business process dependencies and much more.
Selective access
The fundamentally good idea of providing every responsible person with access to the complete IT documentation after all is immediately abandoned due to security concerns. Not only is it seldom possible for mere mortals outside the IT department to make a sensible selection of the data relevant to themselves, there is also a lot of data in the database that not everyone is supposed to see.
If the IT department, which has more than enough work with day-to-day business and the support of servers, software and colleagues (as experience has shown), is not to be degraded to a general point of contact for information of all kinds, other solutions must be found.
Not everyone is allowed to see everything in Docusnap
In addition to denying that such databases exist and can be accessed, however, a better solution has been established: Assigning permissions.
Assigning permissions has always been the daily bread and butter of every administrator. Based on the system policies you set when logging into the IT network, users from different departments are also granted different access to systems, drives or programs. However, this ingenious invention works not only with IT networks, where appropriate servers and domain controllers take care of it. It also works with a professional IT documentation solution like Docusnap.
And suddenly there was light
If it is now possible to simply appoint responsible persons from different areas of the company who are entrusted with the task of providing themselves with evaluations and reports from those relevant to them, a big sigh of relief is in store for every IT department.
As the simplest access, only access to individual reports and queries is then approved for the corresponding user. This user can then access the most up-to-date data with the information relevant to them around the clock. Around the clock is possible because the data is stored centrally in a database on the server. And around the clock is necessary because it is not uncommon for people from the upper floors to access the data and these people would like to be supplied with current information well after work hours.
But even during regular working and office hours, with granular authorization assignment within the IT documentation, all relevant information is available to every person entrusted with it. In addition, further authorizations such as the entry and management of additional information or the creation of new reports or queries can of course be made possible.
Easy roleplaying
In Docusnap, there are not only a lot of predefined roles, such as the role of administrators, inventory or just the simple reader. Rather, you can also create custom roles in Docusnap. Permissions can then be assigned to the individual elements in Docusnap via the roles. This even goes so far as to distribute different administrator or other roles in the case of multiple companies or locations. This makes it easy to manage permissions within an organization as well as across organizations.
A complete listing of all existing roles would of course go beyond the scope of this blog article. Therefore, we would like to refer you to our specially created How-To. There you will not only learn how to add users and new roles, but also how to assign the corresponding permissions in detail.
How-To Docusnap User Permissions
Docusnap does not only show its strengths in an inventory or IT documentation. Over the years, practical experience has also led to the adaptation of important things such as user administration and role assignments to the wishes and needs of customers.
And to ensure that everything runs smoothly and is set up perfectly right from the start, we also provide you with professional support from our own experts during the free trial period. Also free of charge.