5.4

Group Traits for the Database
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Suppose you want to restrict your Assignments directory. In most systems, a few
people—mostly those at the assignments desk—need write permission to this directory. A larger
number of users, such as writers and reporters, need to read, but not edit, stories in the
Assignments directory.
The people who should have read-and-write permission for the Assignments directory come
from different areas of the newsroom, so it is unlikely a group exists with just those users.
However, you could set it up like this:
• Create a group called assignments to represent users who need write permission for the
Assignments directory.
• Similarly, create a group called staff to represent users who need read permission.
• Assign the staff group to the directory’s read group trait and the assignments group to the
directory’s write group trait.
• The staff group should have assignments as a member so that all users with write permission
also have read permission.
Transferring Group Assignments
You might need to locate every instance where a particular group is assigned to a directory or
queue and change that assignment so that another group is assigned to that directory or queue.
To transfer group assignments:
t Use this form of the gtraits console command:
gtraits transfer <current-group-name> <new-group-name>
n
Groups are marked for transfer, but no changes are made to any directories or queues until
dbpurge runs. Both groups that you include in the gtraits transfer command must already exist.
Hiding Queues and Directories
In addition to restricting access to various queues, you can use group access and usage
restrictions to hide queues or directories by placing a strict read restriction on them.
A number of queues on your system probably have very tight write security to ensure that only
certain users can create and edit stories in those queues. If other users do not need to read the
stories in the queue, you may give the queue tight read security. This prevents the queue from
appearing on unauthorized users’ screens. Some examples of this are the Dead queue, a
Suggestions queue, an Employee Evaluations queue, and so forth.
n
All users that you want to have the capability to send stories to these queues need to have write
access to the queue, but not necessarily read access.