CS 10 - Locking down folder down to be read only or hidden

Question

Is there a way to lock down a certain folder down so that the folder and all folders and document with that eventual parent are set to read only or hidden altogether Is this done as a user access level in OpenText or is there a more effective SQL script that will perform this. This is for an OpenText Content Server 10.5 implementation.

David Henshaw · Answer

Hi Steve - is there something specific you need to achieve here that Content Server's out-of-box permissions options doesn't allow you to achieve?  i.e. when you say "read-only", my immediate reaction is look at whether you can set all the existing permissions to "See / See Contents".

Fastman have some options in that space - namely our Permissions Manager and Access Manager products.  Permissions Manager would potentially assist you here if you went the permissions route.

Access Manager's is another option, this provides you a means to "tag" a specific location (and in turn it's descendants) and then restrict what OpenText functions users can perform on that content irrespective of their permissions.  The advantage here is you don't need to update the existing permissions model - meaning that if you need to later revert to a non-read only arrangement, you simply remove the Access Manager rule that you've configured.  A number of our customers use Access Manager specifically for implementing read-only scenarios for this reason.

If you'd like further information, feel free to reach out via our website or I can connect you with someone for a discovery call.

Regards,

David.

appuq · Answer

OT Content Server should not be manipulated by SQL because it is maintained by callbacks and not fully by SQL constraints

Here are commonly used alternatives.

* If your start folder 1d is 2000 and you have many folders /subfolders to it then you can find the descendants by using a join to DtreeAncestors,if that table cannot be trusted, there are commonly used recursive joins in SQLserver and Oracle. Note here I am stressing that the SQL is used only to find descendants.
* For each encountered node, you can use an API; the easiest would be WR, and you could essentially look at its ACL and change it to nothing for no one.
* SA users will still be able to read this because permission checks are not conducted for such users.

If the content is coming from a special file system, you could theoretically set the user to read-only so the file cannot be read by the OTCS service user; this will result in a lot of errors.

Ultimately, a few years ago, when I was working in a system, we relied on an Oscript extension by which we turned anything under a folder into a special object called FilterNodesCallBack.What it does, in essence, is: when you are in a folder and you are listing something, the code uses a view or table I dont remember fully, but it is WebNodes so in Oscript it verifies the calling user has permissions to the nodes, so it shows the user the list, like your folder that you want users not to see.In the callback object you can write your own message saying that "you have no content here to view" something like that.However it is Oscript a hard to cme by skill and not too many people may know how to do it so I would use that only if the permissions fix dont work for you