This example illustrates a scenario in which Role Security may provide a significant benefit to the user experience. It provides insight into the business needs of three different HxGN EAM users who are employees of a single, hypothetical customer.
XYZ Corporation is a national supply-and-service based firm that supplies widgets to many industrial widget customers across the country. It also offers specialized widget support and service to the same industrial customers. The company’s Western regional office is located in Phoenix, AZ. It has an additional regional warehouse and distribution center in nearby Albuquerque, NM, and is headquartered in Rochester, NY. Each of these office locations is documented as a separate Organization in the HxGN EAM environment.
Consider Blair, the first HxGN EAM User at XYZ Corporation, who is a Western regional manager. Blair performs nearly all of the managerial duties at the regional Phoenix office. In particular, Blair is responsible for all purchasing functions for that location; as well as purchasing functions for the Albuquerque warehouse and distribution center. Blair schedules repair and service work performed by technicians based in the Phoenix office. To do so, he requires view-only access to service request records logged at the Call Center at the company headquarters. Since the regional warehousing and distribution center in Albuquerque does not perform any support or service functions, Blair does not perform any scheduling for that office Organization. At times, Blair must also perform administrative functions for the Phoenix office Organization, such as setting up new HxGN EAM Users with the ability to document work performed using the mobile asset management application.
Jordan is a second HxGN EAM user at XYZ Corporation. He is a master widget technician who also works in the regional office in Phoenix. Jordan’s assigned duties include performing widget service that has been scheduled through assigned work orders; and accordingly, ensuring the work he performs is clearly documented prior to closing the work order.
The third XYZ Corporation employee, Reese, works at headquarters in Rochester, NY. Reese is a first-line support analyst at the central Call Center, through which all widget customers place their repair and service requests. The daily tasks that Reese performs in the HxGN EAM system relate only to the Call Center. Although the service requests logged by Reese will result in a work order, Reese does not perform any scheduling or assignment of these work orders or related activities and tasks.
Depending on the configuration of the HxGN EAM environment, proper implementation of Role Security could provide a benefit to the above users, but most significantly to Blair, the regional manager who regularly performs multiple sets of functions for more than one Organization within the EAM environment. Blair’s activities could be summarized as follows, in keeping with previous diagrams in this document:
In this hypothetical environment, if Role Security was properly implemented, the user experience for Blair, could be streamlined to be more efficient in the following manner:
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A single User ID or set of login credentials is used to access the EAM system regardless of desired user experience. Prior to the availability of Role Security, a system administrator might have configured multiple User IDs or sets of login credentials for a single EAM User in order to address a need for tailored user experiences. However, in order to move between these user experiences, a cumbersome and repetitive login-logout process would be required. System Users would also need to keep track of multiple sets of credentials.
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Depending on the selected Role specified by the user at login; the user interface may be modified to streamline workflow(s). For example, when Blair logs into the system and selects to do so according to his assigned Purchasing Role, only menus, screens, and the page layout that is relevant to purchasing functions will be displayed. In this case, Blair would not have access to menus that he would use while performing work scheduling or administrative duties such as Work, Operations, and Administration.
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When a change to the user experience is desired (for example, when shifting from approving Purchase Orders to assigning Work Orders to employees), the EAM User may simply "Switch ole" rather than logging out and logging back into the system. When Blair switches the roles in the system from the Purchasing Role to the Scheduling Role, only menus, screens, and the page layout that is relevant to scheduling functions will be displayed.
In contrast, the functions that both Jordan and Reese perform as EAM system users can be summarized as:
Unlike the nature of Blair’s duties which entail that he complete multiple sets of functions for more than one Organization in the system; based on the present understanding of business processes for this customer, the additional example EAM Users (Jordan and Reese) do not have the same need to perform multiple functions, nor do they need to perform functions in multiple organizations. At present, a Role Security model for only these two EAM Users might be seen as more simple -- each performs a single set of functions as indicated only within a single Organization. For these example EAM Users, the implementation of Role Security may not provide a visible difference to their user experience when they log in to the system.
However, it is possible that in the future Jordan and Blair may need to perform additional types of functions in their respective organizations. In that case, previous implementation of Role Security would allow the System Administrator to quickly and easily assign them additional Roles specific to the functions being added to their duties.