Introduction

Role based access management is offered from JS7 - Identity Services within the scope of JS7 - Identity and Access Management.

• The Identity Service Type determines if roles are managed from JOC Cockpit or from the Identity Provider, for example from an LDAP Server.
  • The JS7 - JOC Identity Service offers to manage roles.
  • The JS7 - HashiCorp® Vault Identity Service offers to manage roles if the VAULT Identity Service Type is used.
• Permissions are managed from JOC Cockpit independently from the Identity Service in use.

Roles and Permissions

Role based Access Management

User accounts are assigned a number of roles.

• Each role is assigned a number of permissions.
• Permissions are available in the following flavors: 
  • Additive Permissions are granted to a user account and add to the permission set of a user account.
  • Subtractive Permissions deny use of a permission and restrict the user account's permission set as they beat Additive Permissions across roles.
• Users are free to create any roles and to assign permissions. Frequently roles are determined from an organizational point of view, for example:
  • administrator
  • application manager
  • business user
• JS7 ships with a number of defaults for roles and permissions, see JS7 - Default Roles and Permissions

Scope and Structure of Permissions

Permissions can be specified in scope and hierarchy:

• Scope
  • JOC Cockpit Permissions are assigned for operations in JOC Cockpit, for example to manage calendars and the daily plan etc.
  • Controller Permissions are assigned for operations on scheduling objects per Controller, for example to deploy workflows, to add orders etc.
    • If more than one Controller is connected to JOC Cockpit then a user account can be assigned a role that for example allows deployment to one Controller but not to other Controllers.
    • Controller permissions can be specified as a default for any Controllers and they can be specified on a per Controller basis.
• Permission Tree
  • Permissions can be considered a tree that offers a hierarchy of branches.
  • Granting or denying permissions at a higher level inherits the permission assignment recursively to deeper levels of the tree.
• Permission States
  • Permissions can take one of three states, being unassigned, granted or denied.
  • Unassigned permissions do not suggest any assumption if the permission is granted or denied.
  • Granted permissions are considered additive within limits as they can be overruled by denied permissions.
  • Denied permissions are considered subtractive without limits as they cannot be overruled by granted permissions.
• Permission Sets
  • Roles are assigned permissions. A user account can accumulate a number of roles, therefore permissions are merged to a permission set by the following rules.
    • JOC Cockpit Permissions
      • Unassigned permissions are ignored.
      • Granted permissions work across any roles unless merged with a denied permission from a role.
      • Denied permissions work across any roles and cannot be overruled by granted permissions from any role.
    • Controller Permissions
      
      • Default Controller
        • Unassigned permissions are ignored.
        • Granted permissions overrule unassigned permissions from any roles and Controllers.
        • Granted permission can be overruled from any roles, they can be
          • denied by a permission of the Default Controller specified by some other role,
          • denied by a permission for a Specific Controller.
        • Denied permissions 
      • Specific Controller
        • Unassigned permissions are ignored, instead the permissions of the Default Controller are applied.
        • Granted permissions work across any roles unless denied by a permission from a role for the given Controller.
        • Denied permissions work without limits across any roles for the given Controller.

Views

Views are available for roles and and permissions. Graphical and Textual Permission views are available.

Roles View

From the list of Identity Services user can click the name of an Identity Service:

Having selected an Identity Service the Roles view is displayed like this:

For each role a default link is available to navigate to the Graphical Permissions View. 

Additional links can be added by use of the Add Controller button. Such links are used to manage permissions that are specific for a Controller.

Graphical Permissions View

The view allows graphical navigation and selection of permissions and is the default view for permissions of a given role:

• Explanation:
  
  •  Navigation
    • The Expand All and Collapse All buttons open and close any child branches.
    • The Expand Active and Collapse Active buttons open and close child branches with granted or denied permissions.
    • The + and - icons at the right edge of each permission icon open and close child branches.
  • States and Colors
    • Permissions show the following background colors to indicate their state:
      • White: Permission is not assigned, i.e. is not granted and is not denied.
      • Dark Blue: Permission is granted and the grant is inherited to child permissions recursively.
      • Light Blue: Permission is inherited from a granted parent permission.
      • Dark Grey: Permission is denied and the denial is inherited to child permissions recursively..
      • Light Grey: Permission is inherited from a denied parent permission.
    • Granting Permissions
      • Clicking the middle of an unassigned (white) permission grants the permission (dark blue).
      • Clicking the middle of a granted permission revokes the grant and puts the permission to the unassigned state (white).
    • Denying Permissions
      • The + icon inside a permission icon denies the permission (dark grey) recursively for child permissions that are located deeper in the permissions tree (light grey).
      • A denied permission shows the - icon, clicking this icon revokes the denial and puts the permission to the unassigned state.
  • Undo/Redo
    • Changes to the permissions tree are stored to the JS7 database.
    • The Undo button allows the last 10 changes to be undone stepwise.
      • Any changes held in the Undo button will be deleted when the user leaves the Permissions sub-view.
    • The Redo button changes the permissions tree back to its initial state when the Permissions sub-view is displayed.
      • The state held with the Redo button is deleted when a user leaves the Permissions sub-view.

Textual Permissions View

The view acts as an alternative to the Graphical Permissions View and displays permissions from a list of textual entries.

The right upper corner of the Permissions sub-view offers to toggle between graphical view and textual view.

• Explanation:
  • Individual permissions can be modified and can be removed from a role using the pencil and X icons that are faded in when the user's mouse is moved over a permission.
  • The Edit function allows the permission to be made subtractive, i.e. for permission granted at a higher level to be removed.
  • The folder part of the view is used to restrict the role to access particular folders only - this includes that any scheduling objects such as workflows are visible from the assigned folder only.

Assignment Strategies

Permission Hierarchy

Permissions are organized in a hierarchical way:

• A role with the permission sos:products:controller:view allows a user to view Controllers only, while a user with the sos:products:controller permission is able to carry out any operations such as to view, to restart, to terminate, and to switch-over between Controller instances.
• The JS7 - Permissions article explains the list of permissions.

Permission Assignment

Assign specific Permissions only

Consider a user account being assigned a demo-role holding the following permission:

• sos:products:controller:view

This permission does not allow the demo-role to perform any modifying operations on Controllers. Instead, such permissions are granted individually by using:

• sos:products:controller:restart

• sos:products:controller:terminate

Assign global Permissions, Deny specific Permissions

The following permissions allow the demo-role to view and to restart a Controller, but not to terminate a Controller and to switch-over between Controller instances:

• sos:products:controller:view

• sos:products:controller:restart

Alternatively, users might prefer to grant the role a higher level of permissions and then to remove one or more specific permissions. This approach is used with the following permission set:

• sos:products:controller

• -sos:products:controller:switch_over

The sos:products:controller permission is an overall Controller permission including permissions to view, to restart and to terminate a Controller. The -sos:products:controller:switch_over permission is removed from the demo-role.

Minimum Permission Assignment

User accounts have to be assigned a role with the following minimum permission in order to be able to login to JOC Cockpit:

sos:products:joc:administration:controller:view

Assignment Operations

Add Permissions

• The Add Permission button in the Permissions sub-view allows to select permissions from a list as explained below.

• Note that specific permissions are used from a list. Users can modify permissions to a more global or to a more specific scope.
  
  • For example, with the below screenshot the ...administration:controller:view permission is selected:
    
    
    
    
  • Additive Permissions: by default selected permissions are granted, i.e. they add to the permission set of a role.
  • Subtractive Permissions: selected permissions can be denied to remove a specific part of a more global permission. This is achieved by use of the Excluded checkbox.

Modify Permissions

• • The pencil symbol is displayed for any permissions in the Permissions view
  • can be used to change the function of a Permission in a Role - to make an additive Permission subtractive and vice-versa. It cannot be used to edit a Permission.
  • The X symbol displayed alongside existing permissions in the Permissions sub-view is used to remove a permission from a role.
  • Note that a role must be configured to be assigned either a permission or a folder as otherwise the role is considered empty and will be deleted.
  • Note that if a user account is not assigned the following permission (or a permission from a higher level) then this user account will not be able to login to JOC Cockpit:
    • sos:products:joc:administration:controller:view

• Graphical Permission Editing:

  • The graphical view is activated by selecting the 'tree' symbol at the top right corner of the Permissions sub-view:
    
    
    
    
  • The editor opens with a partially collapsed permissions tree as shown in the next screenshot:
    
    
    
    
    • The Expand All button (shown in the above screenshot) can be used to open all the tree elements.
    • Navigation is carried out by dragging & dropping the tree view.
  • The functions available for the tree elements are (with reference to the screenshot below):
    • Select / Unselect a Permission - click on the body of an unselected / selected element
      • Selected Permission elements are shown in blue (see the view element in the screenshot)
      • Children of selected Permission elements are shown in light blue (as shown in the screenshot)
• Deny a Permission - click on the plus sign at the left hand end of the element
• Revoke a Permission Denial - click on a - sign at the left hand end of the element
• Show / hide child elements - click on the + / - symbols at the right edge of an element
• In the following screenshot the administration element has been selected, automatically selecting the administration:accounts, administration:certificates, administration:controllers, administration:customization, administration:settings
• In addition, the controllers:manage child permission has been denied, resulting in the fact that the controllers:view is active only.
  
  
  
  

Manage Permissions specific for a Controller

By default User Accounts are granted permissions for all Controllers in a scheduling environment. Permissions that are applicable to a particular Controller only can be added to a role. This can be achieved in the Manage Roles sub-view of the Identity Management Service.

In the screenshot, the demo_role role has been assigned for the Controller with ID controller2.2.0. and will appear in the list of roles as follows.

In this configuration, the demo_role role does not yet have any permissions specific to the Controller ID controller2.2.0. At least one permission needs to be added before the controller2.2.0 - demo_role configuration will be stored persistently.

The interaction of default Controller permissions and Controller specific permissions within the same role is illustrated as follows.

• default permissions:
  • sos:products:controller:view
• Controller-specific permissions:
  • sos:products:controller:agents:view

The Dashboard view for all Controllers will display the status of the current Controller but the status of Agent Clusters will only be displayed for the specified Controller - in this case for Controller ID controller2.2.0. 

Folder Permissions

Folder Selection

Folders are added using the Add Folder button visible in the background of the below screenshot in the upper right corner:

Explanation:

• x

Folders are selected from a tree view that is opened by clicking the folder icon, see screenshot.

Manage Folder Permissions

Folders are used to restrict access to objects such as workflows and schedules. For example, user accounts can be limited to access objects for particular mandators / clients only.

By default permissions are granted for all folders. However, roles can limit access to specific folders.

This is achieved by adding a folder permission, i.e. a set of permissions to view the content of a specific folder only. With a folder permission being in place the permission to access other folders is automatically revoked. If folder permissions should be used for a number of folders then each folder permission has to be specified individually.

Add Folder Permissions

Folder permissions are granted from the Permissions sub-view. Note that before folder permissions can be assigned a role, the role has to be specified for a user account. In the below example, a test user account and demo_role role have been configured and the demo folder has been created in the inventory.

To open the Permissions sub-view for a specific role, first open the Manage Identity Services page for the respective Identity Service, switch to the Roles sub-view and select the role that should be assigned folder permissions. For assignment click the name of the role in the list of roles.

Click the Add Folders button and in the popup window select a root level folder or a sub-folder such as /demo/*. or demo/.

Check the Recursive checkbox in the Add Folder popup window if recursive access to sub-folders is required and click the Submit button.

Any user account that is assigned the demo_role will be able to access scheduling objects in the demo folder only.

Note that the test user account will be able to log in to the JOC Cockpit without being assigned a role, however, no menu items and no functionality is offered from the GUI. A minimum permission is required e.g. by a role that grants the following permission:

• sos:products:controller:view