Roles

Ok, i see how roles can be defined. Its seems that the role is tied to the user instead of letting a user select from multiple roles. Is there a way to do this? What if i have a user who has multiple roles or has a different role for each software? 

Hi Michael,

Michael Alestra said:

I cant find any documentation

There are two, quite basic, information in MicroStation help:

• The Role Configuration File
• Configuration Concepts

I also find a discussion held in EAP time about configuration changes with this information:

A frequent enhancement request has been to add a Configuration Level that allows standards and certain program behavior to be controlled based on the role or discipline of an individual user. CONNECT provides this additional Configuration Level, but leaves it to the user organization to determine how to identify the role of individual users. To use this feature, the Configuration Variable _USTN_ROLECFG is set to the full file name of a Configuration File that contains the role-specific Configuration Variable settings. That can be accomplished in any of the following ways:

• setting a system environment variable at login time,
• conditional tests in WorkSet or WorkSpace configuration files,
• setting the configuration variable in the Configuration dialog,
• some other mechanism devised by the system administrator.

The _USTN_ROLECFG Configuration File is processed after the WorkSpace, WorkSet and User Configuration Files have been processed, to allow any of them to specify _USTN_ROLECFG.

Michael Alestra said:

Its seems that the role is tied to the

My impression is that the link between the role and a user is used as an explanation of the most often situation / scenario, but there is nothing hardcoded in such way.

I understand the role as an extra configuration level represented by a specific configuration file processed after workset configuration is built. What is inside the file and how it's applied is completely up to MicroStation administrator. But the idea of the user role makes sense to me.

Michael Alestra said:

instead of letting a user select from multiple roles. Is there a way to do this?

I think MicroStation does not support such feature. But because it's all about MicroStation configuration, I can imagine a shortcut (or very simple application that will set a variable and starts MicroStation) that will start MicroStation for a current user in a specific role. "Dark side" of this approach is that every role of the user requires own shortcut (but it can be solved by the starting application) and it's required to restart MicroStation when the role is changed.

I guess it would be possible to aternatively setup (have no idea now how exactly to implement it) the configuration where more roles will be defined for every user. What the "role" is and how it works depende on the configuration, so maybe it can be presented by more variables or by one variable with a list of values?

Michael Alestra said:

or has a different role for each software? 

I guess it's not a problem, because you can use conditional processing based on variable defining what product is started.

With regards,

  Jan

Thanks Jan, Here is my dilemma

I need a way to manage not only Microstation, but ProStrutures, OpenRoads and OpenBridge as well. all four softwares make use the same resource files, but some Microstation workspaces call custom menus/macros that I don't want called in the other three softwares.

I can set each software to define standards at the organization level by making a separate organization for each software and then define client based work-spaces at the workspace and workset level. But.. the custom menu/macros are client specific and stored at the workspace level, so they will get loaded in the other software.

I would like a way to have to ability NOT to define those clients custom menus at the workspace levels and would prefer the role level, but I have users that will be performing multiple roles on a project and mostly dictated by the software they are using.

I was hoping the "role" level could be chosen, like how project and user were chosen in the past.