Question about users and administrators of CiviCRM in Joomla

[Lukum]

Hi

I'm new to CiviCRM, and I'm not sure what can be done regarding backend access to CiviCRM and it's links to Joomla users and permissions.

I'm a Joomla admin of http://www.mydomain.com, and as such I have access to all CiviCRM functions. I'm going to use CiviCRM along with other fellows, who shouldn't have admin access to Joomla. I created a test user in Joomla as "manager", and I found that this profile doesn't give access to the CiviCRM component at all. Access to the component is possible with "admin" permissions, but then most of other Joomla functions are also granted to the user, which I don't want.

What's the best way to give full (or even limited rights) over CiviCRM, without giving extended rights over the Joomla backend? What's the advantage of having CiviCRM inside Joomla, compared to the standalone version?

Lukum

[lobo]

Lukum:

1. There is no standalong version of CiviCRM. You can install CiviCRM on either Joomla or Drupal. Currently CiviCRM on Drupal has better permissioning facilities

2. The permissioning of CiviCRM on Joomla is non-existent. We hope to fix this in a future release and move most of the permissioning to within CiviCRM (wwe are approx 60% done with this)

3. We have exposed  few "urls" to the front end (thinks like profiles, transaction pages etc)

lobo

[Lukum]

Thanks. Two questions then:

- Does it mean that users' permissions in Drupal have some correspondance in CiviCRM? Is there any connection between the CMS permissions and the ACL?
- Will CiviCRM 1.7 for Joomla include the CMS permissioning?

Lukum:

1. There is no standalone version of CiviCRM. You can install CiviCRM on either Joomla or Drupal. Currently CiviCRM on Drupal has better permissioning facilities

Does it mean that Drupal's users' permissions

2. The permissioning of CiviCRM on Joomla is non-existent. We hope to fix this in a future release and move most of the permissioning to within CiviCRM (wwe are approx 60% done with this)

3. We have exposed  few "urls" to the front end (thinks like profiles, transaction pages etc)

lobo

[lobo]

- Does it mean that users' permissions in Drupal have some correspondance in CiviCRM? Is there any connection between the CMS permissions and the ACL?

yes. Currently permissioning in drupal is a combination of drupal permissions (via drupal roles) and CiviCRM ACL's. We hope to migrate completely to CiviCRM ACL's by 1.8 or 1.9 which will expose permissioning to all CMS's that we interact with (i.e. drupal and joomla for now)

- Will CiviCRM 1.7 for Joomla include the CMS permissioning?

No. Joomla's permissioning model (or framework in general) is not as extensible or programmer friendly as Drupal (IMO). To be fair, we have been supported a fair amount by the Drupal Core developers so we understand that a whole lot more.

lobo

[cma01]

We hope to fix this in a future release and move most of the permissioning to within CiviCRM (wwe are approx 60% done with this)

Are you talking about the current permissioning (which isn't much) or what is supposed to be coming out in Joomla 1.5?

I'm thrilled that you are taking steps to move this within CiviCRM.  I've used Mambo/Joomla for a long time, but that was one reason I almost went with Drupal on a volunteer project I just completed.

When I first heard about CiviCRM, I thought is sounded like the perfect solution for several volunteer nonprofit projects, except for the permission issue.  It was supposed to have it available when what was then called Joomla 1.1 was released which was initially projected to be what?  November 2005?

Even without the permissioning, it's still an awesome system.  The worst thing about Joomla is that there are so many great components out there, trying them all out is addicting. 

And now with CiviCRM maturing so quickly and the new CiviEvent component . . . let's just say that my available volunteer time is booked for the foreseeable future.

I can't join anymore groups because I would just have to switch them all over to Joomla and CiviCRM.