7.2. Projects

7.2.1. The active project
Selecting an active project
Default permissions for the active project
7.2.2. How to give other users access to your project
7.2.3. Working with the items in the project

Projects are an important part of the permission system for several reasons:

7.2.1. The active project

The active project concept is central to the sharing system. You should always, with few exceptions, have a project active when you work with BASE. The most important reason is that new items will automatically be shared using the settings in the active project. This considerably reduces the time needed for managing access permissions. Without an active project you would have to manually set the permission on all items you create. If you have hundreds of items this is a time-consuming and boring task best to be avoided.

If you work with multiple projects you will probably find the filtering function that hides items that are not part of the active project to be useful. As a matter of fact, if you try to access an item that is part of another (not active) project you will get an error message saying that you do not have permission to access the item (unless you are the owner).

Selecting an active project

Since it's important to always have an active project there are several ways to make a project the active one.

  • The easiest way and the one you will probably use most of the time is to use the menu bar shortcut. Look in the menu for the project icon ( ). Next to it, the name of the active project is displayed. If you see - no active project - here, it means that you have not selected a project to work in. Click on the icon or project name to open a drop-down menu and select a project to set as the active project. If another project is already active it will automatically be inactivated.

    The drop-down menu can display a maximum of 25 projects. If you are a member of more projects, the last menu entry will take you to the complete list of projects.

    [Tip] Tip

    The sort order in the menu is the same as the sort order on the projects list page. If you, for example, want to sort the newest project first, select to sort by the Registered column in descending order on the list page. The menu will automatically use the same order.

  • Use the BASESelect project menu and select the project from the submenu that opens up.

  • Go to the homepage using the ViewHome menu and select a project from the list displayed there.

[Note] Note
Only one project can be active at a time.
[Warning] Warning
If you change the active project while viewing an item that you no longer has access to in the context of the new project an error message about missing permission will be displayed. Unfortunately, this is all that is displayed and it may be difficult to navigate to a working page again. In the worst case, you may have to go to the login page and login again.

Default permissions for the active project

When a project is active all new items you create are automatically shared using the settings from the active project. If the active project has a permission template the permissions from the template are copied to the new item. If the project doesn't have a permission template, the new item is shared to the active project with the configured default level. By default, projects doesn't have a permission template and the default permissions are set to read, use, write and delete. It is possible to change the default permission level by modifying the settings for the project. Simply open the edit-view page for the project and select the permissions you want and save. From now on, all new items will be shared with the specified permissions.

7.2.2. How to give other users access to your project

First, you will need to open the Edit project dialog. Here is how to do that:

  1. Navigate to the single-item view of your project from the ViewProjects list.

  2. Click on the Edit… button to open the Edit project dialog.

  3. Switch to the Members tab. From this page you can add and remove users and change the access levels of existing ones.

Figure 7.1. Manage members of a project

Manage members of a project

Members

The members list contains users and groups that are already members of the project. The list shows the name and the permission level. The permission level uses a one-letter code as follows:

  • R = Read
  • U = Use
  • W = Write
  • D = Delete
  • O = Set owner
  • P = Set permission
Permissions

When you select an user or group in the list the current permission will be checked. To change the permissions just check the permissions you want to grant or uncheck the permissions you want to revoke. You may select more than one user and/or group and change the permissions for all of them at once.

[Note] Note
In most cases, you should give the project members use permission. This will allow an user to use all items in the project as well as add new items to it. If you give them write or delete permission they will be able to modify or delete all items including those that they do not own.
[Note] Note
The above note is not always true since the permission to an item in the project also depends on the permission that was set when adding the item to the project. The default permission is delete and the above note holds true. If the item's permission is manually changed to for example, use, no project member can get higher permission to the item.
Add users

Opens a popup window that allows you to add users to the project. In the popup window, mark one or more users and click on the Ok button. The popup window will only list users that you have permission to read. Unless you are an administrator, this usually means that you can only see users that:

  • you share group memberships with (the Everyone group doesn't count)

  • are members of the currently active project, if any.

Users that already have access to the project are not included in the list. If you don't see a user that you want to add to the project, you'll need to talk to an administrator for setting up the proper group membership.

Add groups

Opens a popup window that allows you to add groups to the project. In the popup window, mark one or more groups and click on the Ok button. Unless you are an administrator, the popup window will only list groups that you are a member of. It will not list groups that are already part of the project.

Remove

Click on this button to remove the selected users and/or groups from the project.

Use the Save button to save your changes or the Cancel button to close the popup without saving.

7.2.3. Working with the items in the project

If you go to the single-item view for a project you will find that there is an extra tab, Items, on that page.

Figure 7.2. 


Clicking on that tab will display a page that is similar to a list view. However there are some differences:

  • The list is not limited to one type of item. It can display all items that are part of the project.

  • It support only a limited set of columns (name, description and owner) since these are the only properties that are common among all items.

  • The list cannot be filtered (except by item type) or sorted. This is due to a limitation in the query system used to generate the list.

[Note] Note
The list only works for the active project. For all other projects it will only display items that are owned by the logged in user.

There are also several similarities:

  • It supports all of the regular multi-item operations such as delete, restore, share and change owner.

  • Clicking on the name of the item will take you to the single-item view of that item. Holding down CTRL, ALT or SHIFT while clicking, will open the edit popup.

[Tip] Tip

This list is very useful when you are creating a new project, in which you want to reuse items from an old project.

  • Activate the old project and go to this view.

  • Mark the checkbox for all items that you want to use in the new project.

  • Click on the Share… button and share the items to the new project.

If you have more than one old project, repeat the above procedure.