Article
07/19/2016

About User Roles

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 SP1 - Service Manager, System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager, System Center 2012 - Service Manager

In your organization, some employees are responsible for supporting hardware, such as portable computers and servers. Some of the employees are allowed to create and update configuration items but not delete them, whereas others are allowed to create, update, and delete configuration items.

In System Center 2012 – Service Manager, the security rights that allow users to access or update information are defined in a user role profile. A user role profile is a named collection of access rights, and it usually corresponds to an employee’s business responsibilities. Each user role profile controls access to such artifacts as knowledge articles, work items (incidents, change requests), authoring, administration, and other credentials. Think of user role profiles as defining what you are allowed to do.

In the future, managers at your organization may decide to separate the group of employees who maintain configuration items into two groups: those who handle configuration items for desktop computers and those who handle configuration items for portable computers. They want to retain these two user role profiles, one profile that can create and edit but not delete configuration items, and another profile that can create, edit, and delete configuration items. You would define these user role profiles with different scopes, one for desktops and one for portable computers. If user role profiles define what you are allowed to do, think of scopes as defining what items you are allowed to modify. The combination of a user role profile and a scope is called a user role.

Understanding User Roles in Service Manager

In Service Manager, when you click Administration, expand Security, and then click User Roles, a User Roles pane displays a list of user roles. Each of these user roles has been configured with a user role profile and an undefined scope. Because the scope is undefined for these user roles, they can exercise their user profiles on all management packs, queues, groups, tasks, views, and form templates. The following table lists the default user roles, their associated user role profiles, and scope.

User role	User role profile	Scope
Activity Implementers	Activity Implementer	Global
Administrators	Administrator	Global
Advanced Operators	Advanced Operator	Global
Change Initiators	Change Initiator	Global
End Users	End User	Global
Read-Only Operators	Read-Only Operator	Global
Authors	Author	Global
Problem Analysts	Problem Analyst	Global
Workflows	Workflow	Global
Incident Resolvers	Incident Resolver	Global
Change Managers	Change Manager	Global
Report Users	Report User	Global
Release Managers	Release Manager	Global
Service Request Analysts	Service Request Analyst	Global

Note

The Service Manager Report Users user role is available only after you register with the Service Manager data warehouse and after the Data Warehouse navigation button is available. To view the Service Manager Report Users user role, click Data Warehouse, expand Security, and then click User Roles.

Example

For example, say that you want to define one security access that allows users to create and edit, but not delete, configuration items and another security access that allows users to create, edit, and delete configuration items. Appendix A, at the end of this guide, lists the user role profiles and their associated artifacts. The following table shows user role profiles as they relate to configuration items.

User role profile	Create configuration items	Update configuration items	Delete configuration items
Report User	No	No	No
End User	No	No	No
Read-Only Operator	No	No	No
Activity Implementer	No	No	No
Change Initiator	No	No	No
Incident Resolver	No	No	No
Problem Analyst	No	No	No
Change Manager	No	No	No
Advanced Operator	Yes	Yes	No
Author	Yes	Yes	No
Workflow	Yes	Yes	No
Administrator	Yes	Yes	Yes

Using the previous table, you can see that the Advanced Operators user role profile can create and update, but not delete, configuration items. The Administrators user role profile can create, update, and delete configuration items. The members of the asset management team who are allowed to create and update, but not delete, configuration items are made members of the predefined Service Manager Advanced Operators profile. The members of the asset management team who are allowed to create, edit, and delete configuration items are made members of the Administrators profile.

As a best practice, assume that members of the asset management team might change. You should create two groups in Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) and make those groups members of the Advanced Operators and Administrators profiles. Then, as members change, users are added and removed from the Active Directory group, and no changes have to be made in Service Manager.

In the future, if you break the asset management team into two groups, one for desktops and the other for laptops, you can create your own user role by using the same user role profiles, but with different scopes.

Why Some User Roles Cannot Be Created

When you are creating a user role, notice that three user roles are not available: Administrator, Report User, and Workflows. These three user roles are created and populated during Setup, and, generally speaking, these user roles are used by Service Manager. The following sections describe each of these user roles.

Administrator

The Administrator user role is global in scope; therefore, there is no reason for creating another user role of this type.

Report User

The user role, Report User, has one purpose in Service Manager: to find the computer hosting Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) for the user at a Service Manager console. When a user at a Service Manager console tries to run a report, a query is made to the Service Manager management server seeking the computer that is hosting the data warehouse management server. The Service Manager console then queries the data warehouse management server seeking the name of the computer hosting SSRS. With that information, the Service Manager console connects to SSRS. The singular purpose of the user role, Report User, is to make these queries. After the Service Manager console connects to the SSRS, the credentials of the user running the console grant access as defined on the SSRS. Because of the narrow purpose of this user role, there is no reason for creating another user role.

Workflows

Workflows might have to read and write to the Service Manager database. During Setup, you are asked to provide credentials for the Workflows user role, and this user role performs the required actions on the Service Manager database. Like the user role, Report User, the narrow purpose of the Workflow user role means there is no reason for creating other user roles.