I’ve been having a strange problem with readers fields. I have written a Notes client based Leave Requests System that contains a Leave Summary for every person in the company. Readers fields are used to hide documents so that staff can only see other staff within the same department (apart from some roles such as [Admin] and [Personnel] and apart from supervisors and supervisor’s supervisor (who may be in other departments)).
This all works fine. When testing the system I have four documents visible and 271 documents in total. I can’t see the other 267 documents because they are in a different department. When I select all documents with CTRL A, the system reports 271 documents. How can that be right? I don’t even want the user to know that there are other documents.
Despite not being able to see the documents, I can delete the documents just selected and I can create a replica of the database that contains those documents. Is this working right? I was always led to believe that you couldn’t replicate documents if you were locked out with a Readers field. Help me out guys!! I’m on version 7.01 at the moment.
Subject: RE: Readers fields not working. Please help.
Thanks Jean-Yves (and thanks Andre).
I think the clue is in Andre’s post where he talks about “Full Access Administration”. I must have that!
If I reduce my access level down to Author, the issue resolves itself and CTRL A only selects the visible documents. I want to do some more tests because with Editor access, I still had the problem.
Subject: RE: Readers fields not working. Please help.
Thanks Phil but the readers field is definitely set-up OK and working because otherwise I’d be able to see all the documents in the view. If I reduce my access level down to Author (from manager) the issue resolves itself and CTRL A selects only the visible documents.
Subject: RE: Readers fields not working. Please help.
Readers fields should work the same regardless of your level of access. Even a server with manager access that does not appear in the Readers field or have a role cannot see the docs. However, with Full Access Administrator enabled you would be able to see the docs, regardless if you were a “member” of the Reades field or not.
Subject: RE: Readers fields not working. Please help.
Thanks for your post Paul.
Let me be clear. The readers field is doing its job. I cannot read the documents protected by readers fields whether I have Manager access to the database or any level lower than that.
However, when I select all (using Ctrl A) the system reports that it has selected all 271 documents not just the four documents I can see.
Furthermore, if I then click the button, the system then triggers the “Query Document Delete” event and the NotesDocumentCollection retrieved from Source.Documents has a count of 271. Depending on the event code, I can delete all 271 documents including those that I was unable to view because of the Readers field protection.
If I reduce my access level in the ACL from Manager to Author, the system then works as I would have expected. Ctrl A reports that four documents were selected. However, any access level higher than Author allows me to select all 271 documents.
I have tried this both on a local replica and on a server. On the server, I would have had “Full Admin Access”. On the local replica, I assume my server access is irrelevant.
I still need to fully understand how my server access affects this. Once I do, I’ll post again.
Subject: RE: Readers fields not working. Please help.
Hi Robin,
it’s always very dodgey testing things like this when you are switching access levels on your PC - I would suggest that you delete your local replica, change your access level for your server replica, ensuring you don’t have any of the roles that will give you priveliged access, make sure you don’t have full admin access turned on, then shut Notes down and restart.
If it works correctly on the server and works correctly when you now pull a local replica, then that’s a valid test.
Subject: RE: Readers fields not working. Please help.
Thanks Tony and Paul for your posts.
I just want to clarify that I had full access in the server document but that I hadn’t switched it on in the Administrator Client.
When I enabled “Full Access Administration” mode in the Administrator client by selecting Administration - Full Access Administration; I was able to see all the documents in the view. When I disabled “Full Access Administration” mode, then I could only see four documents.
However, with “Full Access Administration” mode enabled OR disabled, I could select all 271 documents even though 267 of them were “protected” from me using a Readers field.
When in the ACL, the effective access includes “Full Access Administrator” (even when “Full Access Administration” mode is disabled).
I also want to confirm that I have also tested it with a version 6.03 client and get the same behaviour.
I get the behaviour when I access a local replica and when I access a database on a server.
Subject: RE: Readers fields not working. Please help.
Hi Paul, I’d be happy to send you a database. My e-mail address is rob dot wills at inter hyphen weavers dot com if you’d like to drop me an e-mail or alternatively leave me a comment on my related blog entry at http://www.inter-weavers.com/0/RobsBlog.nsf/dx/ReadersFieldProblem.htm
I’d appreciate someone taking a look before I query it with IBM. Thanks.