Set access rights without Opti ID

You can add users and create groups and give them varying types of access. By creating a group, such as Marketing Department, you can add users from the marketing department and they will each have the same access rights as the others in the group.

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Important

If your organization uses Opti ID with CMS 13, see Access rights with Opti ID.

Access rights in Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) controls the content that visitors see, what editors can do, and where they can do it in the content structure. For example:

• You may give members of the marketing department access to edit the website marketing material that other company users should not edit.
• You can set access rights for many types of content, such as pages, blocks, images, and documents, and in the navigation and assets panels.
• You can also use access rights together with audiences and give an audience from a local 10-mile radius access to an advertisement page.

Access rights are normally managed from the administration view in CMS, but you can give editors the right to manage access rights for a single page in edit view.

Built-in user groups

By default, Optimizely CMS has built-in user groups that align with user roles. You can extend predefined groups and roles; see Administer users and Administer groups.

When your website is set up during development, the membership and role providers available for your website must be configured to use the built-in groups and roles in Optimizely.

• Administrators – Windows defines this group when the application is created. An administrator can access all parts of the system and can edit all application content. Often, administrators are developers who set up or maintain the application.
• Content Admins – Optimizely defines this group to access admin and edit views. Membership in this group does not provide editing access to the content structure. In most cases, only a few system administrators or "super users" belong to this group.
• Content Editors – Optimizely defines this group to access the editing view. Add users to this group who need access to the edit view. Then, add the users to other groups to give them specific editing rights to content. On large websites, editors are often organized in groups according to content structure or language.
• Everyone – Windows defines this group to give visitors read access to website content. Unregistered visitors to a public website are anonymous, meaning the system cannot identify them. If you want to remove the Everyone group from content (to change access rights for a web page, for example), you must login to access content, even if it is published.

Types of access

You can control which parts of the CMS 13 application content structure are available to business users, such as content editors and site administrators, and what is available with restricted access to visitors. You can also let visitors post comments on the application through access rights.

Access types for users and groups

You can control which parts of the application content structure are available to business users, such as content editors and site administrators, and what is available with restricted access to visitors. You can also let visitors post comments on the application through access rights.

• Read – The user or group can access the content as a reader; otherwise, the content is invisible.
• Create – The user or group can create content under the item on which this right is set.
• Change – The user or group can access the content to modify it. Typically, Create and Change are set together, but there may be cases where you want someone to modify created content (but not create their own) or vice versa.
• Delete – The user or group can delete the content.
• Publish – The user or group can publish the content.
• Administer – The user or group can create and edit approval sequences and set access rights and language properties on individual content items from edit view for content given this access. This does not provide access to the admin view. To access the admin view, you must be a member of the CmsAdmins group.

Access to assets and media

Apply access rights to assets in the content structure, including folders, blocks, and media. Define specific access rights from the Root level down, including the Recycle bin (Trash) and For All Sites (or For All Applications), which store blocks and media. Shared blocks and media share the same folder structure.

Editors must have Create access rights to the relevant global or site-specific folder under For All Sites/Applications or For This Site/Application to upload an image or create a block. When adding assets to a local For This Page folder, editors must have Create access rights to the current page instead.

To automatically publish media on upload, editors must have Publish access rights to the target folder (global, site-specific, or application-specific) or to the current page when uploading to a local folder.

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Note

Media are never automatically published if an approval sequence is set on the folder to which the media are uploaded.

Access to languages

If your application has content in multiple languages, you can define access rights for each language so editors can create content only in the languages to which they have access. Go to Settings > Languages > select enabled language > Permissions tab to see which groups and users have access to that language. Only users with access rights to a language can create and edit content in that language. See Manage languages.

Access to the CMS platform

See Permissions for functions for information about managing access rights for other parts of the Optimizely Content Management System (CMS) platform.

Set access rights

1. Go to Settings > Set Access Rights. The Set Access Rights view displays with a content tree structure of the website.

   

2. Click a node in the content tree (for example, Alloy Track). Typically, a content item shows Administrators (with all access rights) and Everyone (with Read-only access rights). You can change these rights or add users or groups.

   • If the users or groups are inactive (grayed out) for a content item, then the content item inherits the access rights of its parent content item. To set access rights for this content item, clear the Inherit settings from parent item checkbox.
   • To add settings to the selected node's subitems without affecting their existing settings, select the Apply settings for all subitems.

3. Select Add Users/Groups. A list of available users and groups displays.

   

4. Modify the access rights settings and click Save Access Rights. The users or groups display in the Set Access Rights view for the selected content tree item.

   

If you set conflicting access rights to content, selected access rights prevail over cleared access rights. For example, Abbie is a member of the Marketing and Support user groups, each with different access rights set on the same content; Marketing has Publish rights, but Support does not. Abbie, who is in both groups, has Publish rights to the content, but Erin, who is only part of the Support group, does not have Publish rights.

Set access rights from the Publish/Options menu

Administrators generally manage website access rights from Settings. However, you can set access rights for a single page or a block from the Publish or Options menu if you have administrator rights, which is useful when you need to publish an item to verify the final result. Still, you do not want it to be publicly visible.

If sub-items are set to Inherit settings from parent item, these items are also affected by your change.

Change the settings in the Access Rights window:

If access rights are inherited from the parent page, clear Inherit access rights from parent item, and click Add Users/Groups to define new access rights. Add access rights as desired and save the settings.

For example, removing read access for Everyone, as in the example above, hides the published page from the public, but it is fully visible and editable for the Site_Editors group (and Administrators).

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Note

You must belong to a group with Administer access rights to define access rights from the edit view. This setting does not provide access to other administration options in Optimizely Content Management System (CMS).

Access rights inheritance and subitems

Set inheritance for content subitems

Content inherits access rights from its closest parent item by default. When you set access rights for a content item, the rights apply to it, and subitems that have a selected Inherit settings from parent item option, subitems with this option cleared are not affected. For example, Alloy Plan, Alloy Track, and Alloy Meet have the same access rights because they inherit the access rights from the Start page.

• If you break the inheritance for Alloy Meet and change its access rights, the access rights become different from the parent (Start) and its two siblings (Alloy Plan and Alloy Track).
• If you add a Marketing group to Start, Alloy Plan, and Allow Track, inherit the Marketing group (because inheritance is selected). Still, Alloy Meet does not because its inheritance is unselected.

The following image shows the access rights for the Alloy Track content; it will not inherit from the parent item. Any changes of access rights on Marketing will not be pushed to subitems unless they have selected the Inherit settings from parent item option.

Campaigns is a subitem of Alloy Track. It has Inherit settings from parent item selected, so the access rights are identical to that of the Alloy Track content item.

Book a demo is also a subitem of Alloy Track, but contrary to Campaigns, it has Inherit settings from parent item cleared, so its access rights are not the same as the parent content item.

Set access rights for subitems

Selecting the Apply settings for all subitems checkbox applies the access rights of the parent item to its subitems, even if a subitem has inheritance cleared. The option adds settings to a subitem it did not have before and does not change or remove any existing settings.

For example, the Alloy Track content item has Abbie as a user with access rights.

When you select Apply settings for all subitems, Abbie is added as a user with access rights to Book a demo because Abbie is part of the Alloy Track content item's access rights. Reid, who already had access rights to Book a demo, remains unchanged on the list of access rights.

Suppose a parent item and a non-inheriting subitem have the same user or group, and the access rights for the user or group differ between the parent and the subitem. In that case, the parent's settings are applied when you select Apply Settings for all subitems. For example:

• If the Alloy Track parent item has user Abbie with only Read access set, and Book a Demo has user Abbie with all access rights set, then Apply Settings for all subitems resets Abbie's access rights on Book a Demo to Read access only
• Conversely, suppose Alloy Track has user Abbie with all access rights, and the subitem has user Abbie with only Read access. In that case, Apply Settings for all subitems gives user Abbie all access rights on the subitem.

Use an audience in an access rights list

The Optimizely Recommendations feature uses audiences; you need administration access rights to manage audiences. If you want an editor to manage audiences without providing access to the entire admin view, you can make the editor a member of AudienceAdmins. This group provides access only to the Audience option in the top menu. AudienceAdmins comes with Optimizely, but you must add it through Settings > Access Rights > Administer Groups > Create Group > AudienceAdmins.

You can set specific access rights for audiences, letting them view specific "hidden" content that is not publicly available. For example, you may want only members of the Visitors from London audience to have access to a Family day at the zoo page with a discount coupon.

This feature is useful to create a "customer area" for registered customers on your website. Being an audience member requires registration and login to access the content.

1. Go to Settings > Access Rights > Set Access Rights.
2. Select a node in the content tree.
3. Click Add Users/Groups.
4. Select Audiences to view available audiences.
5. Select an audience and click OK.

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Note

Audiences can only have read access.

Should I set access rights for a single user or a group?

You can set access rights to content for a single user. For example, you can set the access rights so only Abbie (and system administrators) can edit the Book a Demo page. You can add Abbie to any number of pages and content and set Abbie's access rights to each content item the same (or differently) for each page.

If you have several users who need common access to content, managing access rights on a user-by-user basis can be complex. Create user groupswith similar access needs, add the users to each user group, and then use the user group to set access rights to content. This lets you manage access rights. You can add a user to one or more groups.

For example, add Abbie, Erin, and Reid to a Marketing user group and give access rights to any number of pages and content to the Marketing group instead of each individual. You modify the Marketing user group to add Eddie to all of the Marketing content (or remove Abbie). You do not have to visit each page or content item to update users' access rights.

Remove a user or group from the access rights list

To remove a user or group from the access list, clear all of the access rights for that user or group and click Save.