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PRODUCT REVIEW
Cassetica makes Notes Group Management easy
By Janine Sutphen
I used to be a Lotus Notes Administrator. I would sit at my desk, surrounded by piles of requests for NAB (Name and Address Book) group additions, deletions, and changes. My blood pressure would rise. Perhaps I touted the advantages of using groups in the ACL (Access Control List) rather than individual names too forcefully. I wondered whether the barrage of requests would ever end. Everyone wanted a group! Group Manager, developed by Cassetica (at http://www.cassetica.com), is a third party Lotus Notes software program that assists in the creation, deletion and maintenance of groups in the NAB.
The problem: who should be allowed to make changes to the NAB?
Who has access to make changes to the NAB? This is a question plaguing most organizations using Lotus Notes. The NAB is the cornerstone of a Notes system, and thus the integrity of the NAB is critical. The first bastion of security is authentication. Authentication is the process of comparing the name a user logs in with to the names in the company's address book. If the names match exactly, the user is given access to the company's server.
The next level of security is the Access Control List. Each database has an ACL, which regulates who has access to the database and what each user or group is allowed to do within the database. Both individuals and groups are listed in the ACL. Possible levels of access include depositor, reader, author, editor, designer, or manager. Thus, both the entries for individual users and groups must be completely accurate for Notes security to function optimally.
The more people creating and modifying information in the NAB, the greater the possibility there will be mistakes. If administrators are the only ones allowed to make the changes, then there's the possibility of a problem in communication between the administrator and the requestor. The problem can be one of unclear communication of the details, urgency of the request, or inadequate communication regarding the completion of the request. Although this problem exists in many of the tasks associated with Notes' IDs, it seems to be magnified in relation to group creation and deletion.
Cassetica's Group Manager provides you with a tool that gives you a measure of control over your group requests. You're able to create requests to your specifications using a form in a centralized database. Administrators can "pick up" the request and either create or delete the group in the NAB. Upon creation or deletion of the group, the user is notified by an agent that the request has been completed. To me, this seems like a win-win situation! Let's look a bit further at the software.
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