I hope to pool some recommendations and direction for a project I'm using Umbraco for. This project requires me to give access to many content authors. These content authors may have different responsibilities and levels of permission of the site that the current permission scheme in Umbraco doesn't support OOTB.
Let me first discuss the types of content that is being managed within this Umbraco install:
Core data models - which you can think of in terms of individual products, companies that make them, categories they may fit in. Each of these "models" is a document type and each model has a content node (1 to 1).
Article submissions - I want authors on the site to create their content within Umbraco, but they shouldn't be able to access (even view) another authors content and media nodes.
Wiki content - There are also areas where people should be able to jump in and help edit content collaboratively. In these cases, content and media nodes should be locked down to a collection of users.
I face a couple of issues achieving this within the CMS right now:
When authors are writing content such as articles they should have a unique folder specific to them. I'm fine with setting this up manually per author - I expect that. But Umbraco doesn't allow me to set multiple root nodes so this is actually impossible due to other requirements. Another viable option is to set special permissions on a content node so that users can only see content they create by default.
For Wikis - I think it would best to lock each wiki individually by user type - and then use the user type to set permissions on each wiki individually. I expect some manual process here - but again Umbraco doesn't allow this either. Allowing a 1-to-many correlation between users and user types would make this possible. A package already exists for locking content nodes down by user types. This would need to be expanded to the media tree.
Keeping the media center effectively organized is challenging under this model. With so many authors and types of content I'll need to make sure new media is kept cleanly organized. When setting up media pickers, for example, within the doc type, there is no way to tell Umbraco that the root media node for uploaded images should match the content node structure. Doing this would make it very easy to keep the media center organized. You can either choose an image that exists somewhere, or newly uplaoded images must be put in a folder resembling the structure of the content node you are in.
Anyways, I feel like there are couple of other issues or suggestions I could put here but I'm most interested in hearing from the Umbraco community about your own trials and tribulations with locking down content and media against many authors.
Unfortunately this discussion has been going on for a long time. I started asking for improvements to the user permission system over 5 years ago and I know others did before me. There's a lot of work involved, so I wouldn't expect to see anything for at least a few more years. There's a good article on the topic at http://skrift.io/articles/archive/i-have-a-dream-about-user-management-in-umbraco/.
Thanks for the reply mate! I actually never got anywhere with this project and had to revert to a custom ASP.NET MVC solution to handle content generation between multiple authors. It's a shame. We still use Umbraco but it's only to manage the core data models and content for them.
I feel like there are only a few things missing from Umbraco that really need love and attention. (1) The permission schemes like we've touched on, and (2) workflows. I hate to say it - but SharePoint got the workflow thing right - and a product like Nintex but for Umbraco would make waves.
I'll read up on your article and your project for v6 after this labor day weekend to get some more background. I don't have as much free time as I once did as I'm studying for my last exam to earn my MCSD.
I think the Umbraco ecosystem needs this - maybe we can work together on a proposal / architecture as to how this would work and be implemented and work on a package together? If you don't mind somebody who is wet behind the ears in programming - I'm much stronger front-end than I am with C#.
Amazing! I was just mentioning that the other day and am working on a project right now that could really use multiple start nodes! #h5yr
By the way, Umbraco 7.7 is supposed to have better support for groups (e.g., so you can set permissions for a content node based on a group rather than for particular individuals). That'll make things much nicer than they are now.
Would be great if they also included your multiple start node package in the core.
More Granuluar Permissions for Content and Media Nodes
Hi Everyone!
I hope to pool some recommendations and direction for a project I'm using Umbraco for. This project requires me to give access to many content authors. These content authors may have different responsibilities and levels of permission of the site that the current permission scheme in Umbraco doesn't support OOTB.
Let me first discuss the types of content that is being managed within this Umbraco install:
Core data models - which you can think of in terms of individual products, companies that make them, categories they may fit in. Each of these "models" is a document type and each model has a content node (1 to 1).
Article submissions - I want authors on the site to create their content within Umbraco, but they shouldn't be able to access (even view) another authors content and media nodes.
Wiki content - There are also areas where people should be able to jump in and help edit content collaboratively. In these cases, content and media nodes should be locked down to a collection of users.
I face a couple of issues achieving this within the CMS right now:
Anyways, I feel like there are couple of other issues or suggestions I could put here but I'm most interested in hearing from the Umbraco community about your own trials and tribulations with locking down content and media against many authors.
Thanks for your help!
Mark
Hi Mark:
Unfortunately this discussion has been going on for a long time. I started asking for improvements to the user permission system over 5 years ago and I know others did before me. There's a lot of work involved, so I wouldn't expect to see anything for at least a few more years. There's a good article on the topic at http://skrift.io/articles/archive/i-have-a-dream-about-user-management-in-umbraco/.
I was able to hack something together for multiple start nodes in the content and media section by borrowing some code from https://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/epiphany-custom-content-tree/. That was back on v6 though, so I don't know how that'd work now.
Dan,
Thanks for the reply mate! I actually never got anywhere with this project and had to revert to a custom ASP.NET MVC solution to handle content generation between multiple authors. It's a shame. We still use Umbraco but it's only to manage the core data models and content for them.
I feel like there are only a few things missing from Umbraco that really need love and attention. (1) The permission schemes like we've touched on, and (2) workflows. I hate to say it - but SharePoint got the workflow thing right - and a product like Nintex but for Umbraco would make waves.
I'll read up on your article and your project for v6 after this labor day weekend to get some more background. I don't have as much free time as I once did as I'm studying for my last exam to earn my MCSD.
I think the Umbraco ecosystem needs this - maybe we can work together on a proposal / architecture as to how this would work and be implemented and work on a package together? If you don't mind somebody who is wet behind the ears in programming - I'm much stronger front-end than I am with C#.
Thanks for the reply,
Mark
Hi Mark:
I just released a package that adds the ability to have multiple content and media start nodes.
It's still in development and has not been tested on a production site, so I would recommend testing it out fully first.
You can find the package at https://our.umbraco.org/projects/backoffice-extensions/multiple-start-nodes/
The source is on github if you'd like to contribute https://github.com/danwhite85/Umbraco.MultipleStartNodes
Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.
Amazing! I was just mentioning that the other day and am working on a project right now that could really use multiple start nodes! #h5yr
By the way, Umbraco 7.7 is supposed to have better support for groups (e.g., so you can set permissions for a content node based on a group rather than for particular individuals). That'll make things much nicer than they are now.
Would be great if they also included your multiple start node package in the core.
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