Managing Groups

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to manage groups in the Central Management Console (CMC).

Groups

Definition:
  • Groups are collections of users who share the same account privileges in the security model; therefore, you may create groups that are based on department, role, or location.
  • Groups enable you to change the rights for users in one place (a group) instead of modifying the rights for each user account individually.
  • Also, you can assign object rights to a group or to several groups.
  • Setting security on groups (instead of on users) is a recommended best-practice for administrators in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

Groups management is only handled by administrators in the Users and Groups area of the Central Management Console.

In the Users and Groups area, you can create groups that give a number of people access to the report or folder. This enables you to make changes in one place instead of modifying each user account individually.

To view available groups in the CMC, click Group List in the Tree panel. Alternatively, you can click Group Hierarchy to display a hierarchical list of all available groups.

After creating a new group, you can add users, add subgroups, or specify group membership.

Users and Groups area allows administrators to manage users and groups in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

Subgroups give more levels of organization, so they’re useful when you set object permissions (rights) to control other user access to your SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 content.

It's useful to create subgroups when you want to further classify groups of users. For example, you can be grouped by location (such as European), and then further divide by group according to their department (such as the European Sales Team).

Default Groups:

There are groups that are built-in in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025. The following groups are available by default:

  • Administrators

  • Everyone

  • Cryptographic Officers

  • Data Federation Administrators

  • Translators

  • Monitoring Users

  • QaaWS Group Designer

  • Universe Designer Users

Let's see two groups of them which are the most important default groups:

Every user belongs at least to the Everyone group. This means that any rights that are assigned to the Everyone group apply to every user account in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025. The Everyone group does not have subgroups. For instance, the default administrator user account (called Administrator) belongs by default both to Everyone and to Administrators groups. It is NOT possible to remove a user from the Everyone group in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

The Administrators group is granted Full Control to all objects in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025. This means that members of this group have the right to perform almost any task in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 - including assigning rights to others. Members of this group can perform all tasks in all SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 applications (CMC, CCM, Publishing Wizard, and BI Launch Pad). The administrator account is a member of the Administrators group.

By default, the Administrator user account is the owner of everything in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 that is not created by another user. This concept of ownership is important in managing security.

Default groups are provided by default in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

Group Hierarchy

The Users and Groups Area

Top-Level Groups and Sub Groups View:
  • You can use the Group Hierarchy view from the side panel in the Users and Groups area of the CMC to view the users or subgroups who belong to a specific group.
  • Initially, the top-level groups are displayed. In order to view sub groups, you can either expand the group (+ symbol) or select a group. In the latter case, the sub groups and members are displayed on the right.

Note

It may take a couple of seconds for your list to display if you have a large number of users in the group or if your group is mapped to a third-party enterprise directory (LDAP, Active Directory).
Group Hierarchy view shows the users or subgroups who belong to a specific group.

This behavior is different than the Group List view. The Group List displays all groups in a "flat" list, with no obvious relationship of parent group to sub group.

You can use either view to navigate to groups and perform group-related tasks, such as adding users or changing properties.

Create Groups

In this exercise, you will create groups in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025.

Summary

  • You can create groups, add users or subgroups, and specify group membership to control user access to BI content.
  • Subgroups provide additional levels of organization, useful for setting object permissions and classifying users, such as by location and department.
  • SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 has built-in groups like 'Administrators' (who have full control) and 'Everyone' (which includes all users).
  • The Administrator account is a member of the 'Administrators' group and owns everything in SAP BusinessObjects BI Platform 2025 not created by other users.
  • The Group Hierarchy view allows you to navigate groups and perform tasks, showing the relationship between parent groups and subgroups, unlike the Group List view.