The MatrixMaxx AMS comes with a variety of Privilege Groups that control access to both the back-end staff intranet and front-end WWW pages used by the public and members. Association staff may add new committee and list-based groups for use in protecting pages on other 3rd party systems, such as a Content Management System (CMS) generating the website news and content.
Who can access this area?
Generically, SiteAdmins can access the privilege group area, though some associations have customized this
Where is this information in MatrixMaxx?
Admin menu -> Manage Access Levels
What are the 3 types of privilege groups that I see on the Manage Access Level page?
Staff Privilege Groups come with the generic MatrixMaxx AMS product or are setup by the MatrixMaxx team during implementation. These groups typically control access to the back-end intranet though in the past there were a few custom ones added here that controlled WWW side access, too
Automatic Privilege Groups are automatically created by the system and ready for use by MatrixMaxx or other outside systems. Typically, these are committee lists. Most associations have restricted areas based on committee — e.g., a Board-only area — so we simply create these groups automatically to save association staff time.
List-based Privilege Groups are created manually by association staff. The process:
- Create an Individual List in the communication module
- Go to the Manage Access Levels page, click the edit (pencil) icon next to this section, and tag this list as a privilege group
- It is now available to be pulled by other systems
How do I connect a privilege group access level to another system powering our website, such as my Content Management System?
This will vary based on the system and the vendor. Contact your CMS vendor to get the ball rolling. If your website is developed/hosted by Matrix Group Services, then you can probably already do this.
NOTE: Once you make this connection, do NOT change the name of the list or membership type in MatrixMaxx or the Role in the CMS will BREAK. See below for more info on how to recover if this happens.
How should I test access when I create a new list-based privilege group and connect it to a portion of my website’s CMS?
We recommend testing:
– an active member on the list who should have access
– a nonmember/formermember on the list who should have access
– an active member who is NOT on the list and thus should not have access
What happens if we accidentally delete a list that was being used to grant access to a portion of our website?
If a list ever gets deleted, this access will break and everyone will be locked out. To help avoid this from happening, be sure that the help text in the long description in MatrixMaxx is very clear. If other staff know the importance of the list, they are less likely to delete the list due to its CMS/website connection.
To make everything work again, recreate the list with the exact same name.