iCS for PDF Predefined ProjectWise Users


Introduced in iCS for PDF 10.00.03.298 is the “Predefined ProjectWise Users” leaf under the “Configuration” branch of the Orchestration Framework Browser. This feature is available only to users running iCS for PDF Administrator with an ODBC or OLE DB direct database connection.

A right-click "Edit" will display a dialog that allows server administrators to define ProjectWise service accounts having non-expiring credential policy (and, optionally, disabled user access control) and assign display names.  When creating stored jobs, or changing credentials, less privileged job administrators only see the display names.  The actual ProjectWise username and password are never available to a non-server administrator.  This includes the display of running stored jobs in the ProjectWise Explorer active jobs window.

Only Logical ProjectWise and Windows-authenticated users are allowed as predefined users.  The ProjectWise user account must have non-expiring credential policy.

Using the "+" button on the toolbar to add a new predefined user, the properties dialog below is displayed.

The "Select Data Source and ProjectWise Credentials" button invokes the standard Orchestration Framework ProjectWise login dialog.  In this case, the username and password fields are required.

Entering OK validates the credentials, obtains the password token, and returns to the predefined user properties dialog with the read-only fields now populated. Including the ProjectWise datasource name in the Display Name is useful for identifying the Predefined User but not required. 

When creating a new stored job, the end user is first presented with the standard Orchestration Framework datasource / credentials dialog, now allowing selection of a predefined ProjectWise user.

The radio buttons and other controls enable/disable appropriately based on whether any predefined users are defined in the database.  Only the predefined users for the selected ProjectWise datasource are listed.

The standard ProjectWise dialog is displayed next since iCS for PDF Administrator does not have credentials to log into the ProjectWise datasource. 

In this dialog, the user can log in using any available authentication method, including IMS.  This login session will be used by the job builder dialog.

Note that the ProjectWise file / folder / saved search pickers will ONLY display items the login user has access to.  Depending on the datasource permission strategy, it might be necessary to log into ProjectWise as an administrator user when creating and/or editing stored job definitions.

When editing an existing stored job, the behavior is the same.  If a login session for the user associated with the job definition has already been established inside iCS for PDF Administrator, the edit command takes you straight into the job builder dialog.  Otherwise the standard ProjectWise login dialog is presented allowing the user to establish a session as any user without changing the stored credentials that are used when the job is executed.

To help the user keep track of the current session credentials versus the stored job credentials, a "Datasource" tab has been added to the iCS for PDF Job Builder dialog:

The Datasource tab allows the stored job credentials to be changed from within Job Builder in addition to the "Change Credentials" command from the job's right-click menu.

The "Change Credentials" dialog for a single job definition, and the "Multi Change Credentials" dialog for multiple job definitions have been updated to include the predefined user.  These dialogs may be used to switch back and forth between a predefined user and a normal username/password, or between different predefined users.  For these workflows, no subsequent PW standard login dialog is needed.