[dev] Virtual address book permissions

[Kevin M. Myer]

Quoting Michael Rubinsky <mike at theupstairsroom.com>:

> My original implementation did just that, very similar to the way IMP
> does vfolders.  I had it running on a small test server with a handful

This was my original thinking when I submitted the feature request, to 
essentially allow a user to save searches, but read on below.

> of users. A number of the users had expressed interest in being able to
> share the vbooks so I reimplemented it to use a share as the 'backend'.
>  I thought it would be useful to have these vbooks available to people
> without each user having to create his/her own vbook.  A new
> employee/student whatever would just login to Turba/IMP etc and will
> see a listing of all the people in the Support Deptartment etc...  If
> the consensus is to not go that route then, I'll just re-reimpliment ;)

I wasn't sure how I would like the implementation as a Virtual Address 
Book, but I found that it is actually potentially useful, at least from 
an admin's perpsective.  The reason this is so is because of the 
existence of Horde_Share in Turba now, because it lets me easily create 
a logical group of entries and share that with everyone, just by saving 
a search.

So in the end, I see two potential uses, depending on the way you go 
(or both if you implement both).  First is a Virtual Contact List, 
which is mostly akin to the initial feature request.  This allows users 
to save a logical grouping of their choice, afix a name to it and use 
it for things of their choosing (most likely as a whole group of 
names).  The second is a Virtual Address Book, which allows an admin 
(or a user with appropriate permissions) to save a logical grouping of 
their choice and have it be available to other users as a logical 
grouping.  In this case, the admin makes the choice of the grouping and 
then provides it in a logical format to users, in the form of an 
address book.  I'd see the more typical uses of this not necessarily be 
having the whole address book be used, but instead, providing a limited 
subset of all available choices in a container that users can interact 
with.

As an example, lets say you wish to work with users by Location, with 
an end goal of being able to email them.  If you want to work with 
*all* users in a particular Location, you can a) create a Contact List 
by hand, or b) save a Virtual Contact List that queries a source where 
LOCATION=blah.  Option b provides a logical grouping of entries in the 
format of a Contact List.  If you wished to send an email to just some 
of the people at a Location, you could a) find all the people at the 
Location and select the ones you want, from a source, or b) use an 
existing Virtual Address Book, which an admin has setup to select the 
users at one Location.  Both "B" options eliminate the need for a user 
to specify the initial search criteria.  Each helps winnow through 
potentially thousands of entries and make those entries available in 
logical subsets of the overall data available.

As far as the PERM_EDIT question, why would you give a user more 
permissions with a vbook, if they didn't have PERM_EDIT on the original 
source?

Kevin
-- 
Kevin M. Myer
Senior Systems Administrator
Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13  http://www.iu13.org