Combining Protection and Customization Levels to Control Access (Oracle Workflow Administrator's Guide)

Oracle Workflow Administrator's Guide
Release 2.6.3
Part Number B10283-02


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Combining Protection and Customization Levels to Control Access

You control access to an object by the combined settings of the protection level and the customization level. You can set the Preserve Customizations and Lock at this Access Level check boxes for an object in one of four ways to specify the type of access you want to allow:

Allow access to everyone--By default, all users are allowed access to an object if the Preserve Customizations and the Lock at this Access Level check box are both not checked. That is, the protection level is 1000 and the customization level is 0.

Limit access to users with access levels equal to your own or higher--If you check the Preserve Customizations check box but do not check the Lock at this Access Level check box, you designate the object as being customizable by anyone with an access level equal to or higher than your current access level. However, users with a lower access level will not be able to modify the object. That is, the protection level is 1000 and the customization level is your current access level. You should only mark objects as customizable in this way if you are sure that you will not be providing upgraded versions of this object in the future that would overwrite other users' customizations to it.

Limit access to users with access levels equal to your own or lower--If you check the Lock at this Access Level check box but do not check the Preserve Customizations check box, you protect the object and ensure that the object can only be modified by users with an access level equal to or lower than your current access level. Users with a higher access level will not be able to modify the object. That is, the protection level is your current access level and the customization level is 0. Protect any objects that you want to define as standard components that will not change unless you provide a global upgrade. For this reason, it is important that you always operate at the same consistent access level.

Limit access to users with access levels equal to your own--If you check both the Lock at this Level and Preserve Customizations check boxes, you ensure that the object cannot be modified by anyone other than users operating at your current access level. That is, the protection level and customization level are both set to your current access level.

The following table summarizes which access levels can access an object under different settings of the Preserve Customizations and Lock at this Access Level options.

Preserve Customizations	Lock at this Access Level	Access Level applied to Object
Cleared	Cleared	Object may be updated by any access level.
Checked	Cleared	Object may only be updated by users with access levels equal to or higher than your current access level.
Cleared	Checked	Object may only be updated by users with access levels equal to or lower than your current access level.
Checked	Checked	Object cannot be updated by any access level except for your current access level.

Attention: If you have installed the beta version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer on your PC, which automatically installs an early version of a file called comctl32.dll, you may not see the lock icons appear on the locked objects in Oracle Workflow Builder. To correct this problem, install the production version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer to replace comctl32.dll with the latest copy.

The protection and access levels in Oracle Workflow are present to remind you that certain workflow objects should not be modified or should only be modified by someone accessing the tool at an authorized access level. This feature is not intended as a means of securing or source controlling your workflow objects.

Attention: Most workflow objects provided by Oracle Workflow have a protection level of 0, which means the objects can only be modified by the Oracle Workflow team, operating at an access level of 0. If you attempt to alter your access level to 0 and modify the data anyway, your customizations will not be supported, especially if Oracle Workflow provides an upgrade to the seed data that may overwrite the modifications you make to the originally protected data.

Combining Protection and Customization Levels to Control Access

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