N4 Security: Overview

Data is the most critical asset for any organization. The security elements in N4 are designed to protect your data from the outside world and at the same time allow you to segregate and separate data for your customers, such as shipping lines, trucking companies, and line operators. As an N4 administrator, you can use the security elements to control who can view or update data, perform actions, run reports, or extract data for use with third-party applications.

The basic component of security in N4 are privileges (on page 1). Each task that a user can perform in N4 is associated with one or more privileges. However, you cannot add, edit, or delete privileges that are defined in N4. In addition, you cannot directly assign privileges to a user. To assign privileges to user accounts, you group them together to create roles, which you can then assign to users to grant them the use of the system.

For example, the Booking Add privilege enables a user to add a booking and the Booking Edit privilege enables a user to edit an existing booking. To allow a user to add and edit bookings, you create a role with the Booking Add and the Booking Edit privileges and assign it to the user.

The one action in N4 that does not have a privilege associated with it is the ability to add and maintain user accounts. By default, only the superuser (admin) can add and maintain user accounts. However, if you have a large number of users and you want more than one user to be able to add and maintain user accounts, you must create a delegated role and assign it to a user (on page 1) account. A user with a delegated role can in turn create other user accounts with all or a subset of user roles assigned to them.

In addition to roles and users, you can create business groups (on page 1) to filter the records that a user can see in any list view or form. A business group is a collection of business organizations such as line operators, rail operators, trucking companies, and agents. When you associate a business group with a user, the user can access only the data associated with the business organizations listed in the business group.

Refer to the Help within each N4 form for specific instructions for creating roles, users, and business groups.