Folder Permissions / Work Area Participants

Hello professionals!

We have been using ProjectWise in our company for about two months in a test mode. Everything works just fine except one thing that we are not able to set up and we don’t even know if there is any way to do it.

Here is the case:

Imagine a set of different projects (hundreds) and each project does have its own working area in a same datasource and it always have the same folder structure.

Then you have a set of users grouped by their specialisation and some users in a specific group with only read access all the time (investor) and users with full access all the time (admin).

Then you also have users that are working on a specific project so you want them to have write access only to the project they are part of.

Now you want every single user to have READ access to all projects and all folders and also you want users from a specialisation group to have WRITE access to their specific folder but only in a contract they are suppose to work in.

We are using workflows that makes the thing a bit more complicated.

So, you have following groups:

• Group A has users: A1, A2
• Group B has users: B1, B2
• Group F has users: user F (full)
• Group AR has users: user AR (always read)

Now you have projects:

• Project X – users working on this project: A1, B1
• Project Y – users working on this project: A2, B2

And permissions we would like to have set:

• Project X
  • Folder_for_A – read: A2, B1, B2 and AR; write: A1 and F
  • Folder_for_B – read: A1, A2, B2 and AR; write: B1 and F
  • Folder F – read: nobody; write: F
  • Folder AR – write: everybody
• Project Y
  • Folder_for_A – read: A1, B1, B2 and AR; write: A2 and F
  • Folder_for_B – read: A1, A2, B1 and AR; write: B2 and F
  • Folder F – read: nobody; write: F
  • Folder AR – write: everybody

For one project it can be done like this:

1. We make workflow for Folder_for_A
2. We set Participants to a Project X set for ALL
3. We make a list of users called List X contains all users except those not collaborating on the project: A2, B2
4. Permissions set on phase in a workflow – Write: Group A and F; Read: List X and AR (priority of the list is higher than group permissions so it gives read only for those users that are not involved in the project)
5. We assign the workflow to a Folder_for_A
6. We repeat similar steps 4 and 5 with other folders.

The problem is that if you want to do this for more than one project you have to repeat all 6 steps.

It is ok that you have to make a new user list for each project. But you also have to create new set of workflows (and even phases) and this is not the way we want to go through.

Any ideas how to do such thing easier?

For me would be the easiest way just make difference between Observer and Team Member in Participants of Work Area. Observer will have always read only but Team Member will be managed by the workflow. Our company was told by our distributor of the ProjectWise that this kind of settings is not possible, though.

Thank you for your advice!

John