Multi Level Access

Question

An NGO I'm helping to is trying to create multi-level access to their resources. Is it possible to create a sytem, where there are local groups, regional groups and national groups? I'd like to add option that local group leaders only see contacts from their own 'suborganisation', and regional roles only see the own region including certain local groups, etc. Would that be possible? I found only 8 years old answers, and they were not clear :(

Answer 1

Yes, absolutely possible

Most of this is via CiviCRM so it shouldn't make too much difference which CMS you're using (Drupal/Wordpress/Joomla etc).

Take a look at this section of the user manuals

https://docs.civicrm.org/user/en/latest/initial-set-up/permissions-and-access-control/

ACL's (Access Control Lists) is the area of CiviCRM configuration you'll be using. They allow you to control who see's what in effect and control data access i.e. regional secretaries in the London Region can only access members of the London Members Group. And then each borough maybe a child group for example with access control in the same way but this time for branch seceraties. You can have multiple roles all forming the ACL and you can allow people to be in more than one and therefore have access to more data/contacts.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

We have used the Permissioned Relationship extension to offer features that might work for you.

By using Permissioned Relationships as the ACL it means you can

• add members to a local Group via a relationship
• add officers via a different relationship, to the local Group record (a civi contact)
• enable read/write access to those local members for the local Group officers
• connect the local Group to a regional group via a relationship, and let the permissions flow down, hence regional officers get a relationship to the regional record, and the Region gets a permissioned relationship to the local Group record, hence regional officers get to access members across all the connected local groups.

I thought there was a lengthy blog about this but perhaps it disappeared during some upgrade. There is a review of it here.

While 'old' it is still an effective solution for these types of needs. Along with standard Civi permissions you can finesse what the permissioned contacts can actually do.