One of the more sophisticated features of Asset Bank is its concept of user groups and permissions. The idea is that you can set up groups of users in the system and define a number of permissions rules and other settings specifically for that group.

One of the most powerful elements of this is using Access Levels to define permissions. For example you could define a user group that is allowed to both upload and download assets in the system intended for internal members of staff in your organisation. Additionally you can create a user group that can only view assets in the system (i.e. they have no download or upload permissions), which could be intended for external clients or members of the public. 

 The scope of this functionality goes further, you can define which categories a user group can edit and also which attributes a user can see against the asset.

Working with Groups

To view the Groups page, click on the 'Groups' link in the Admin menu.

Every Asset Bank starts by default with two groups already set up:

• *Logged-in users - Any user that logs into the application falls into this group, be they an admin user or normal user. 
• *Public - Any user on the site whether they are logged in or not falls into this group. So if a user has logged in he will be in both the *Public group and the *Logged-in users group.

These default groups are displayed with an asterix to indicate that they are special system groups that cannot be deleted.

Adding new groups

Click 'Add a group' to add a new group. This will take you to the Add Group page where you can specify the properties of your new group.

• Name (required field) - the name of your new group.
• Description - a short description of your new group. 
• Maximum daily downloads - specify how many downloads users within this group are allowed per day (leave this blank or set to 0 for unlimited daily downloads).
• Max download height - specify the maximum height of an image that users in this group are allowed to download (leave blank for unlimited).
  
• Max download width - specify the maximum width of an image that users in this group are allowed to download (leave blank for unlimited).
• Users can email assets - if ticked, users in this group will get the option to send assets as an email when downloading.
• Users can view larger size - if ticked, users will see the 'view larger size' or 'view full size' links when viewing the detail page of an image.
• Editors can only edit their own files -if ticked, users with edit permissions are restricted to only editing assets that they have uploaded to the system themselves.
• IP Mappings - if you enter one or more IP addresses in here then any user accessing the system who is coming from one of these IP addresses will automatically inherit the permissions of this group without having to log in. A common use for this is specifying your own companys IP address so that your employees will have the same permissions and access to the same assets of, say, the *Logged-in Users group without having to actually log in.
  
• Advanced viewing of unnapproved assets - If the advanced-viewing-enabled setting is true then this option will allow members of this group to see unnapproved assets that have also been ticked as 'advanced viewing' (still subject to the permissions of the access levels that the asset is in).

If your Asset Bank is configured to integrate with an LDAP server then you can enter the DN (Distinguished Name) of an LDAP group. When a new user is added to Asset Bank from the LDAP server then, if that user is a member of an LDAP group that is specified in one of Asset Bank's groups then the user will be added to the Asset Bank group automatically.

Once you have added the new group it will show in the list of groups on the Groups page. Alongside it will be a list of possible actions you can perform::

• Edit - rename  the group or change some of its basic settings.
• Access Levels - configure access permissions for this group.
• Categories - specify what categories users can edit.
• Attribute Exclusions - exclude access to assets depending on their attributes.
• Attribute Visibility - control which attributes are visible for users in the current group.
• Filter Exclusions -
  
• Usage Exclusions - select usage types that will not be visible to users in this group.
  
• Remove all users - clicking this will remove all users from the group. Note: this will only disassociate the users from this group it will not remove them from the system.