Permissions, Roles & Assets

As a user of Cascade, you are granted permission to view and/or edit specific content areas. This may be in the form of entire folders, single pages or even smaller portions of a page. Your ability to perform actions (such as create, edit, view) depend on your permission to do so and your role in the system.

Assets

Before we go into detail about permissions and roles, you should first have a general understanding of the structure of Cascade. Websites and the associated pages are contained in folders. A group of webpages defines a website. A template defines every page. A group of associated blocks defines a template. Each of these items (page, template, block, etc.) is called an asset in Cascade.

Pages page icon

The "look and feel" of a page is defined by a template. Pages are one of the most important asset types in the system. Pages publish HTML (hypertext markup language) to the website in addition to other formats.

Folders folder icon

Folders are used to group related assets. The Sample Site has folders set up to group content together in the left navigation. For example, all pages related to the Support section are grouped in a folder. There is also a folder labelled "images" that contains all the images used for the site.

Content Wizards content wizard icon

Content Wizards provide users with a quick and easy way to create new assets (blocks, folders, pages, etc.). The placement of the asset can be predefined in the content wizard. Content wizards are particularly useful for content that needs a pre-configured look and feel, such as a press release page.

Files file icon

Files are unchangeable assets whose content cannot be edited within Cascade. These may be jpeg images, PDFs, Word documents or any other file types. File name, location and metadata can be edited.

Templates template icon

A template defines the layout and "look and feel" of a page. Each template can be broken down into several regions (or blocks).

Blocks block icon

A block is a piece of content that can be easily substituted. Some examples of blocks on the Sample Site include the left navigation, breadcrumbs and copyright statement. Blocks are used when there is content that is common to many pages.

Permissions

Site managers determine user permissions for their sites. These permissions determine which users or groups have access to a specific folder or asset. Each user or group can have read or write access to a folder or asset, both or neither. Read access means that you are able to see the folder or asset, while write means that you are able to modify the asset (i.e. create, edit, copy, and delete).

Roles role icon

Roles define user abilities. Roles can be assigned per user or per group. Through group association, users can inherit roles. This means a user is automatically given more abilities if they are added to a group with a higher role than their own.

A user user icon or group group icon is assigned one of four global roles that inherit the capabilities from the role beneath it. Sites can also have custom roles that are based on the global roles.

Contributor

  • Navigate through the site structure
  • View content
  • Edit content
  • Create new content using Content Wizards
  • Copy items
  • Delete items

Publisher

  • All actions of the Approver
  • Publish content in a workflow to which he/she is assigned
  • Bypass workflows to publish content directly upon editing

Approver

  • All actions of the Contributor
  • Approve or reject content in a workflow to which he/she is assigned

Manager

  • All actions of the Publisher
  • Access to administration area of their site

There are two central administrators that have unrestricted access to the server.