User Guide

Understanding Contribute user management models 7
Consider a large organization with several decentralized websites. In addition to a public-facing
site that provides information about the organization, several internal sites are in use by individual
departments and workgroups. The organization uses LDAP as both a directory service that lets
users look up other employees as well as an authentication service through which administrators
set permissions that limit users’ access to file-sharing servers and other network resources.
Unlike sites that don’t use CPS to manage users, when a user logs in to a CPS website, the User
Directory service retrieves the connection information associated with that user, and provides
access to the sites that the administrator assigned. By maintaining site connection information in
the User Directory, administrators can add or remove access to websites without having to resend
connection information.
This example provides a partial listing of employees from an organization’s user directory. The
employees, their workgroup affiliations, and the sites they can access are listed in the following
table:
Although this user list is oversimplified, it demonstrates one possible scenario for the way that
users within an organization might be assigned access to websites. This scenario divides users
according to their role within the organization, and assumes that they have full editing and
publishing privileges in their respective sites. Certain users have access to all the sites. For
example, the product managers, John Lydon and Malcolm McClaren, work with all the teams in
developing and launching products, and need to contribute to all the sites.
Likewise, web designer Laura Logic and Contribute administrator Jah Wobble have access to all
sites. As the web designer, Laura provides templates that are easy to add content to and that fit the
needs of users collaborating internally. The templates she maintains include those for taking
meeting minutes, for scheduling, and for providing product specifications, marketing launch
plans, and sales projections, to name a few. Laura also collaborates with Jah Wobble, the
Contribute administrator, to help determine the editing and publishing privileges for individual
users and roles.
User Workgroup Websites
John Lydon Product Management Sales, Production, Marketing
Malcolm McClaren Product Management Sales, Production, Marketing
Martin Atkins Marketing Marketing
Keith Levine Sales Sales
John Savage Production Production
Laura Logic Web Design Sales, Production, Marketing
Jah Wobble Contribute Administrator Sales, Production, Marketing