Can a user have different access levels for different groups

[alancorb]

The aim is to have areas on the site for various committees to access, with no access to general viewers, and for access only for users for their specific committee(s). Some users will want access to many committees' areas as they will be a member of a number of committees. Can a user have read-only access for one committee's area and read-write access for a different committee's area?

[rcarey]

That is possible. But before I can give you a description of the ACL, I need to confirm some things...

Is all the content of each area to be articles? If not articles, what data type? Will you be mixing content types?

And, by "areas," will this content be restricted to a menu item, or could it be distributed throughout the navigation of the site?

[alancorb]

Thank you for the quick reply. The 'areas' will be categories and the content of each category will be articles. The aim is to allow each committee to post details of their minutes onto the site. Only members of a committee will be able to see that committee's minutes and not other committee's minutes. A couple of each committee will be able to post the minutes (the article) for everyone on that committee to be able to view. However, one of the read-only members of a committee may be on a different committee and want to be able to post that committee's minutes. I hope this makes sense.

Thank you in anticipation.

Kind regards

Alan

[rcarey]

I think I understand. I'm glad you are limiting this to articles and Joomla categories, as that makes the work much simpler...

First create the needed groups. I'd create a top-level group called Committees and have it inherit from Public. You might not need this top level group, but it might be needed later to grant some permissions to all committee members.

Next create a group for each committee. Have each group assign Committees as its parent.

Create an access level for each committee and assign only its corresponding committee group as part of that access level. so you will have a one-to-one relationship with each committee group and each committee access level item.

Now for each committee, create a sub group. I'm not sure what you want to call each, but these will represent those who can edit the content within that committee. So maybe you call each Content Mgr. Because each inherits from a different group, you should be able to call them the same name, if you want.

Now create the categories, one for each committee. For each committee assign it the corresponding access level. then for its permissions, go to the corresponding Content Mgr group and Allow the appropriate actions: create/edit/etc.

You will have bounced around a bit, but that should complete your ACL configuration. The next thing to do is assign people to committees....

For each committee member, assign them to the committee groups for which they are to read. Then assign that user to the Content Mgr groups for which he/she is able to edit.

Test it out. (Create one or more test users, assign them to some combination of committees, log in as each test user, and see if all is behaving as expected.)

Now I am rattling off the steps without trying it in a test environment, but this should work. Please post back your results. If something is not working for you, I will look deeper and try to help. And I assume that each category will be grouped under a menu item. If so, make sure each menu item is set to the corresponding access level.

[alancorb]

Randy

Sorry for the delay in replying. I've been over and over the site making sure I've understood your instructions but no luck, I'm afraid. Not sure where I'm going wrong.

Please see attachment which, I hope, shows the current state.

Both users (G and P) can see both menu areas (Reports under Awards, Reports under Debating) but neither can post to either area. I, as SuperUser, and unregistered users, cannot see either menu areas (I'm not a member of those groups) but I can post items from the front end plus I can post to both Reports categories.

I can give G and P the ability to post articles from the front end by making them a member of the Publisher group.