VISTA Plus for MPE Administrator's Guide

Security
7-9
Assigning Reports to User
Assigning reports to users eliminates the disadvantages of the first method. With this method,
report names are assigned to a specific user. When a folder is opened, the user will only see the
names of reports that have been assigned to them. A user name consists of session name, user name
and account name. This allows VISTA to reference a specific user on the system. Use the Link
Reports to User window to define reports a user can access.
Advantages
• Quick determination of the reports a specific user can read using VISTA Maintenance.
• Only the report names that have been assigned to a user are displayed when a folder is opened.
• Users with Account Manager or System Manager capability are allowed to see all report names
in a folder. The VISTAINI file’s $ALLOW-SM-SYS-CAPABILITIES and $ALLOW-AM-
ACCT-CAPABILITES options can be disabled to prevent a user with these capabilities from
seeing all reports in a folder.
• Wild cards can be specified within a report name to reference a group of reports with similar
characters within the name. To refer to all payroll reports that contain the characters “PAY,”
you could enter PAY@.
Disadvantage
• You cannot identify reports that have the same name but have been created by a different job or
session. This could present a problem when a folder contains two or more reports with the
same name that have been created by a different job.
Combination of Security Methods
Using a combination of the previous security methods eliminates the disadvantages. The only
disadvantage is that implementation is a little more difficult than using one method.
With this method, you must assign security to reports with Report Maintenance and then assign
reports to users with Link Reports to User.
Note. Whenever you assign reports to users with Link Reports to User window, the
user will only see those reports assigned through this method (i.e., it overrides any
other method of assigning reports).