About Application Administration

SBM Application Administrator enables you to perform application configuration tasks—such as adding projects and assigning them to workflows, creating user accounts and assigning them to roles and groups, and creating notifications.

You can also use Application Administrator to import users, import data from spreadsheets, manage record locks, create business calendars, and manage items in auxiliary tables.

Administrative Concepts

Make sure that you understand the following administrative concepts before you use SBM Application Administrator.

SBM Composer

SBM Composer is used to design applications, including workflows, states, transitions, forms, roles, and other process elements. Once deployed, these applications are configured using SBM Application Administrator.

Applications

An application is a collection of elements that work together in an interactive process to solve a business requirement, such as managing work tasks or tracking customer support calls. An application is based on a single primary table and typically contains workflows, fields, forms, roles, projects, reports, and notifications. Applications are created in SBM Composer as part of a process app, which can contain multiple applications.

Projects

Projects serve as storage bins for primary items, which follow a workflow. Projects are grouped by application.

Projects enable you to organize groups of primary items in a way that makes sense for your workflow. For example, you can create a project for each functional team working on a product or for each version of the product.

Workflows

A workflow is a collection of states, transitions, and fields that define a process. Workflows are created in SBM Composer and deployed to your runtime environment. You can then assign projects to workflows. This two-fold system enables you to first define your processes, and then assign them to projects to track primary items at various levels. Several projects may use the same workflow.

Roles

A role is a collection of application-related privileges. Users may have different roles in different projects, and a user can be assigned to multiple roles. Examples of the types of permissions associated with a role are the ability to view and update fields; the ability to perform specified actions on items, attachments, notes, and reports; and the ability to specify access to, or restriction from, certain transitions. Designers create roles in SBM Composer as part of an application.

User Accounts

Each user has an account with characteristics such as a user login ID, password, and e-mail address. Each account has privileges associated with it that determine the information the user can access and functions the user can perform. Privileges are assigned to users as part of their group membership and role assignment.

Groups

A group is a named collection of users who have the same privilege set. A group might be created for a particular project, for example, or for a division within the company. A user can be assigned to multiple groups.

The core privileges available for groups and roles are generally the same. However, groups contain additional privileges, such as system and administrative privileges that are not available with roles. Typically, complex process apps require a combination of roles with the additional privileges that groups provide.

Resources

Resources enable you to manage resource team assignments, scheduling, job functions, and skills of employees in your organization. Resources can be based on SBM user accounts or for employees who do not have SBM accounts.

Notifications

Notifications are generated when certain events occur in the system. For example, users can be sent e-mail notifications when an item is assigned to them. Notifications can also be used to execute scripts, call Web service functions, and automatically add and remove items from folders.

"Quick" Administrator Features

When a new process app is deployed, certain features are automatically enabled. This eases the process of adding new applications.

"Quick" Administrator features include:
  • A project is created for each application workflow. The project name is the workflow name, appended with the string "Project". If the workflow name includes "Workflow", it is replaced by "Project". If necessary, the whole name is truncated to 32 characters to comply with database constraints.
  • The application workflow hierarchy becomes the project hierarchy.
  • The person who deployed the process app can view and submit items into the application's projects and is automatically assigned all roles on these projects.

  • A default set of notifications are automatically created. For details, refer to Provided Notifications.

Key Benefits

Managed Administration

Depending on your product-access type and privileges, you may only be able to administer specific applications and application features, users, and groups. For details, refer to Managing Administrators.

Administrative Locking

Application Administrator does not lock application elements with features, such as projects, roles, users, groups, and notifications.

If multiple administrators edit the same feature, such as a project, at the same time, and one administrator saves his or her changes, a pop-up opens for the next administrator who attempts to save changes. This administrator can select one of the following options:
  • Save My Changes

    Delete changes made by the first administrator and save your changes.

  • Get Data

    Delete your changes and update the page with the changes made by the first administrator.

  • Cancel

    Cancel the save operation.

Logging Administrative Changes

Changes made by administrators are automatically recorded and can be viewed from the Administrator Portal in the Administrator Changes view (under the More category). These include changes to most administrative functions, as well privilege and membership changes. For details, refer to Administrator Changes.

In addition, you can view the following:

  • The TS_ADMINCHANGES table in the SBM Application Engine database. The Administrator Logging feature records changes to most administrative functions. The time changes are made and the user making the changes are also recorded, as well as administrative changes made via the SBM API. For details, refer to the SBM Database Schema Reference Guide.
  • The Users Change History system report in SBM Work Center. Use this report to determine when user accounts were created, deleted, modified, and more.