Access Controls with the SharePoint Connector

Enable access controls for SharePoint articles

Overview

SharePoint enables you to control article access based on a user's profile attributes like location or group membership by defining metadata related to the articles. The Aisera Platform can ingest User Profiles and article metadata to enforce these regulations. User Profile information offers a comprehensive set of details, delivering more than basic User information.

The Aisera platform will store the site group information within custom fields providing a view of user affiliations. When a user makes a request to an Aisera application, all relevant articles will be gathered. The user profile affiliations will then be checked against each articles metadata to determine if a user is allowed to view the article. If a user doesn't meet the criteria, their access to the article will be restricted. Only articles that the user has permission to view will be made available to them.

Prepare

Ensure that you have provided the necessary credentials for User Profile ingestion. These steps for providing these credentials can be found under Authorization in the prepare step of the SharePoint Connector.

Ingest User Profiles from SharePoint

User Profile information will need to be ingested into the Aisera Platform and combined with existing User information. To do this you will create a new data source similar to the steps outlined in the SharePoint Connector document.

Data Source Creation

To create the Data Source for User Profiles ingestion:

1. In the Aisera Admin UI navigate to Settings > Data Sources

2. Click + New Data Source in the upper right corner

3. Select SharePoint and click Next

4. Choose the Integration with the credentials and appropriate authorization as detailed above

5. Select User Profiles Learning for the function field

   

   SharePoint Data Source User Profiles Learning function
6. Fill in the remaining general configurations and click Next

7. Define the Site if you are not using the default site

8. Check the On Prem checkbox

9. Check the Bypass Test Connection checkbox

   

   SharePoint Data Source configurations
10. Select Next until the window closes to save the data source configurations

Data Source Field Configuration

Additional fields will need to be added to the Data Source. These fields are used to ensure the User Profile information is merged with existing User data, and to check if a user has access to an article. For information on adding additional fields view the document on Data Ingestion

Add a New Field Mapping named MessageType and provide it with the fixed value of MERGE_USER_INFO

Add a New Custom Field named siteGroups and add the SharePoint field value siteGroupsArray[*]

Add a new custom field named azureId and provide it with the SharePoint value Id

SharePoint Data Source field mappings

Enable Access Controls

To enable Access Controls:

1. In the Admin UI navigate to Settings > Access Controls in the left navigation panel

2. On the right side of the row for the siteGroups access attribute, click the Pencil icon to open the Edit Access Attribute modal

3. Check the Enable checkbox

   

   Enabling the Access Attribute
4. Select OK to save the changes