Understanding Functional and Access Roles

PMF provides you with the flexibility to create, modify, and set access levels for functional roles and access roles. A functional role is a class of user that controls access to systems when performing work in PMF. An access role is created and assigned to a group of users who are granted the same level of access to the measures and dimensions in PMF.

Administrators can edit functional roles to control the system-level functions each type of user is allowed to perform. Users are assigned one of the functional roles that ship with PMF, which are administrator, author, planner, analyst, and consumer. You can also add as many new functional roles as are needed for maintenance of your system.

In most organizations, a Business Strategy Committee has the responsibility to assign functional roles. By default, when a user is added to the PMF application, the user is assigned an administrator role. Because an administrator grants user IDs and passwords, you should assign each user an appropriate functional role for their area of responsibility in your organization.

Planning Considerations for Functional Roles

When you determine functional roles, consider the following factors:

Only a few individuals are granted access as administrators, authors, or planners. This should be based on their responsibilities for the PMF application.
Executives, managers, and planners are those participants who have budget responsibilities and are helping to define the strategies. Their areas of responsibility within the customer site provide critical feedback for the representation of the strategies and required modifications.
Before you set up a new role in this panel, you must set up a corresponding group in Managed Reporting using the Managed Reporting Administration Interface. For details about using this interface, see the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Administrator's Manual.

All others will generally be granted user access, though there might be exceptions based on the particular needs of your installation.

Reference: Default Functional Roles in PMF

Each default functional role in PMF has access to a particular combination of tabs in the PMF dashboard. If you want to change these tabs, you need to use the WebFOCUS Dashboard View Builder. For more information on using the WebFOCUS Dashboard View Builder, see the WebFOCUS Managed Reporting Administrator's Manual.

The following table lists and describes the default functional roles that are provided with PMF.

Role/Group	Function	Tabs Available
Administrator	Performs and checks every facet of the application. Assigns users to roles, sets up the initial operational data in the application, and enters other application-specific data for each site. Also responsible for ongoing maintenance of the application.	All tabs are available. The only other role with access to Administration is the Planner.
Author	Sets up the structure of the scorecard, specifies the measures to be used, and links them to the scorecard. This role has the authority to update all fields in the scorecard and all updates are kept historically by date of the entry.	Today, Analytics, Author, Strategy. This is the only role with author and strategy update capabilities.
Analyst	System users who analyze data, view scorecards, view and comment on their own measures and those of their staff, and perform forecasting functions. Cannot enter values.	Today, Analytics
Consumer	System users who can display their own views and provide comments on the results of a scorecard. Cannot enter values.	Today
Planner	Sets up targets for one, many, or all measures in the system.	Today, Analytics, Administration.