The ContactEase Administrator module helps network administrators manage security for databases, users, and work groups.

ContactEase Administrator is a powerful addition to ContactEase. This is a tool network administrators will find indispensable for managing group and user access to company databases. ContactEase Administrator makes it is easy to precisely define specific user and group access rights and file permissions for your ContactEase databases. ContactEase Administrator gives you much flexibility in granting these privileges.

The Advantages of Groups
One of the strengths of ContactEase Administrator is its ability to assemble users into related groups. Grouping users allows the administrator to assign the same basic rights to multiple users in one step. This can save a lot of time when compared to defining the same set of rights individually for each user. It also makes adding new users to that group easy.

Adding a New User
New users are automatically added to the global group called Everyone. Other groups the user needs to be a member of can be identified when the user's account is setup. Use the Everyone group as a catchall group, adding it to other groups or using it with files you want to grant permissions on, regardless of the users currently defined.

Permissions and Rights
Setting permissions determines the basic file access level. This is done when you first add a database file to ContactEase Administrator. Or you can adjust access permissions to a file from the Edit File dialog, which can be opened by double clicking the name of the file.

Controlling User Privileges
Controlling access by users can be accomplished in three ways: establishing permissions on each file, setting individual rights, and using predefined group rights.

Tab Functions

The Users Tab
The Users tab defines security at the User level for all unsecured ContactEase databases. The Users tab can also be used to add and remove Users to and from Groups. A User is anyone who has an account on the network. For Administrator to work properly, the username must match the network username. ContactEase will automatically add a user to the database security when it is run from a client workstation.

The Groups Tab
The Groups tab lets you create a group of users that have similar interests, such as everyone in the accounting department or on the newsletter committee. Defining a Group is an efficient way to define security settings for blocks of users. Use groups as often as possible!

The Files Tab
The Files Tab lets the ContactEase database administrator define security settings for shared ContactEase databases. Permission to access any database file can be granted on a User or Group basis.

The ContactEase Administrator Guide
The ContactEase Administrator Guide comes with the Administrator module. The guide is designed to help network administrators with installation, rollout, and administration of ContactEase as well as using the ContactEase Administrator program for day-to-day database administration.

Database Administration Scenarios
Examples of day-to-day administration provided in the ContactEase Administrator Guide include the following:

• Network-wide phone book (creating a company-wide phone book)
• Workgroup phonebook (marketing department)
• Personal phone books (manager and secretary)