Permissions and Sharing in Inventory 🧪

Introduction

In the initial version of Inventory, we have implemented the core permissions and sharing functionality. We are planning to develop these features to allow for more options in the future; current functionality supports an open lab-type sharing setup.

The current permissions and sharing rules are:

• All Inventory items belonging to LabGroup members are visible to everyone in the LabGroup
• Items can be edited, moved, and deleted by anyone in the LabGroup
• You can transfer your own items to another user, who can be anyone in the system. PIs and LabAdmins can transfer items of other members of their LabGroup

More details on sharing and permissions functionality are presented in the the following sections.

Detailed Permissions

Anyone can:

• view/edit/transfer owned inventory items
• view items inside owned containers
• view a container that stores owned items
• view/copy default templates

Group member can:

• view/edit inventory items owned by members of their group

Group’s PI/Lab Admin can:

• view/edit/transfer inventory items owned by members of their group

Community Admin can:

• view items owned by members of their community

System Admin can:

• view everyone’s items

View items owned by a specific user

You can restrict searches to show items owned by a specific LabGroup member, by opening the advanced search menu and selecting a user in the Search Results By Owner section.

Filter by items you own

Items you own will have the default info icon. If the item is not owned by you, the icon will display as a people icon to indicate that this is an item shared with you.

You can use the Just Mine filter in the main search or in a container to quickly filter the items by ownership. The filter icon will turn blue if a filter is active, and non-applicable items will display as greyed-out.

Filters are quick way to view a specific subset of the search results, without modifying the search that was performed.

Transfer Ownership

Transferring ownership of an item to another user gives the new owner full control over the item. Only the current owner of an item, or a PI/LabAdmin of the LabGroup can transfer ownership of an item. The recipient of the transfer can be anyone on the system.

1. Click on Transfer on an item

   

2. Select a user to transfer the item to. You can use the dropdown to choose from the list of users in your LabGroup, or start typing a name or username of a user in the wider system, then select from the autocomplete options.

   

3. Click on Transfer to confirm the transfer.

   

4. You will get a success notification. Note that if you are transferring to a user outside of your LabGroup, this will trigger a notification about the item not being viewable anymore.

   

Edit Lock

We have an edit lock system in place to prevent users from accidentally modifying the same item simultaneously. When you start editing an item, other users will not be able to edit the item. The edit lock is released once you stop editing, by either saving, cancelling, or timing out.

To prevent items from being locked for a long period of time, the edit lock times out after 5 minutes of inactivity. If you're currently editing, you will get a warning after 4 minutes of inactivity that your session is about to expire, and you can choose to renew the lock.

If you do not renew the lock, the lock will expire and another user will be able to edit the item.

If you lose the lock, you will still see the unsaved changes you've made, but will not be able to save so as to not overwrite any new changes made to the item. To add these changes to the item, click on edit again to claim the edit lock, then make the changes.