Linking security roles to salespoint and operator groups to enable report filtering

This feature is useful if, for example, you have one or more people in your organization who need to run financial reports, such as the Period Sales Report, but must not be allowed to report on sale transactions that were generated from salespoints outside of their areas of responsibility (use salespoint group reporting role security) or that were generated by operators outside of their area of responsibility (use operator group reporting role security). This feature allows more operators to gain access to reporting, but only within their designated areas.

Warning: Incorrect use of this feature can cause unintended filtering of reports to occur and reports may not match. Before enabling reporting by salespoint or operator groups, be sure that you truly require this functionality, because turning it on has far-reaching consequences in all financial-related reports, including a performance impact. When troubleshooting to ensure that you are getting the results you expect, use the ADMIN log-in to generate reports, because no filtering occurs in ReportManager when using this account. If you have any questions about this feature, please contact Siriusware Technical Support before using it.

To enable security-based reporting with ReportManager, reporting roles and operator groups were added to the SysManager user interface. There is a new Operator Group edit dialog and new Reporting Role tabs were added to the existing Salespoint Group edit dialog. This functionality is similar to salespoint groups, but for operators. Under SysManager > Preferences > Miscellaneous > Manager, new Enable report filtering to authorized salespoint groups and Enable report filtering to authorized operator groups check boxes were added in support of this feature.

In addition, under the Activities > System Lists > Operators > New (or Edit) > Security tab, new Salespoint Reporting Rights and Operator Reporting Rights buttons were added. These buttons are enabled if salespoint group or operator group reporting is enabled on the Miscellaneous Preferences dialog. These buttons provide information regarding what specific data this operator can report on. These buttons provide a useful tool for verifying the proper configuration of your salespoint group or operator group reporting roles.

The new secure reporting functionality can be enabled/disabled by single salespoint group and operator group check boxes on the Manager tab in Miscellaneous Preferences in SysManager > Preferences > Miscellaneous (Enable report filtering to authorized salespoint groups and Enable report filtering to authorized operator groups). Siriusware Inc. recommends that clients who don't need this do not enable this security filtering as it could potentially cause performance issues with the various report queries.

Once report filtering is enabled, the new Reporting Roles tab becomes active in the Operator Group and Salespoint Group edit forms in SysManager. Authorized security roles can be assigned to salespoint/operator groups simply by using the arrow buttons to move from the Available Roles list to the Authorized Roles list.

One suggested way to configure this is to create new Reporting security roles (SysManager > Preferences > Security, and then click the New button). Create as many Reporting security roles as you need based on how you want to segregate which operators can see data from which salespoints − you can either assign various security roles to these Reporting roles or you can leave all of the security roles as Unassigned. Once you have configured the various Reporting security roles you can then assign these roles to the salespoint/operator groups you have in your system. After configuring this, the currently logged in operator must be a member of one or more security roles that are linked to one or more salespoint/operator groups in order to report on data that is related to those groups.

Automatic “reporting role” filtering/security, based on user defined salespoint groups and operator groups, has been implemented on all financial related reports (e.g., Cash Drawer Report, Gross Receipts Report, Period Sales Report, Saved Sales Audit Report, etc.) and a few other reports where applicable. Reporting role filtering/security is enabled/disabled by single salespoint group and operator group check boxes on the Manager tab in SysManager > Preferences > Miscellaneous > Enable report filtering to authorized salespoint groups and Enable report filtering to authorized operator groups. Generally, reporting role filtering/security is not applicable and therefore not active on pass-related reports (except for the Access Activity Report and Pass Activity Report), inventory-related reports, Rentals-related reports and booking-related reports.

If reporting role filtering/security is active on a particular report, the All/Range/Group radio buttons on the salespoint and/or operator picker controls are red and the tooltip displayed by hovering over the picker controls provides specific security filter details. For example, the tooltip tells you if the operator or salespoint security filter is ON or OFF and if ON which are the authorized operator or salespoint groups to be reported on.

Additionally, all reports that had operator filter criteria now have the new operator picker control to allow filtering on the new user defined operator groups (even if operator group reporting role filtering/security is not activated).