Permission Sets for Winter 14
It should come as no surprise to anyone that we here at Arkus are a big fan of Permission Sets. Not only did some of us have something to do with their birth at Salesforce but we built a free tool to manage their assignment in mass called The Permissioner. Now that I have that shameless plug out of the way, let’s get into some new Permission Sets in the Winter 14 release that are worth a second look.
Connected Apps Permission
By default in Winter 14 the Chatter Mobile App will be considered a Connected App. With this there are security settings around who within the organization can access and utilize the application. There are two settings within the Permitted Users which determines who can run the app. The first is self-authorization, not so fun as far as permission sets as this just allows anyone to on their own approve and then run the app. The second is where permission sets come into play. This is where admin-approved users are pre-authorized. This means an admin can assign a permission set to users who should be pre-approved to use and run the application without authorization.
Expanded Topics Permissions
With Winter 14, topics now have permissions. With that comes the ability to assign those permissions via a permission set. The permissions that exist are called Assign Topics, Create Topics, Delete Topics, and Edit Topics. I’m going to call this “Folksonomy Management” and using permission sets you now have the ability to assign this management to a certain group of users and can even get as granular as allowing some users to create topics and others to delete them. This is the kind of granularity we are looking for when we are using permission sets.
Moderation In Communities
Community moderation is a new feature that must be turned on in Winter 14 before the moderator permission is available. Once it is available users within the community can flag inappropriate content. You can then use a permission set to assign the ability for users to moderate the community by granting permission to moderate communities feeds and moderate communities files. These permissions allow users to remove flags, delete items, and even see a list view of flagged items. The cool part about this permission set is that it can be assigned to a community member whether they are an internal or external user of Salesforce.
View Global Header
With the introduction of Communities came a new user interface element that not everyone was pleased with called the Global Header. This was the grey ribbon at the top of the page that told you whether you were in a community or the internal application. By default in Winter 14 the header is going to be turned off. You can now assign a permission set that includes the permission called “View Global Header” - this permission is the only way that users will then see the Global Header.
The last big one I feel for this release is the new kind of permission set called “Permission Set Licenses” which I covered in the rapid release blog post. As you can see pretty much everything that is being released these days comes with the ability to both turn on or off at the profile and at the permission set level. Even licenses to products are moving away from checkboxes on the User record and into permission sets. Get on the boat because permission sets are here to stay and are getting more powerful release after release.
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