Profile Editor

Build a profile to customize the user’s environment, define page listing and who can access it.

Definition

Functional

Profiles work as permissions to give access to Living Applications

A profile is made of a name, a description, and a mapping with the organization entities. When used to access a Living Application, the application menu is defined in the application descriptor itself.

All applications can use the default profiles Administrator and User.

Technical

Technically, a profile is an XML file.
Profiles are packaged in files of profiles.
A file of profiles is an XML file containing one or more profiles.

<!-- file of profiles -->
<profiles>
	<profile>
		<!--  First Profile -->
	</profile>
	<profile>
		<!--  Second Profile -->
	</profile>
</profiles>

However, profiles in a given file of profiles are totally independent.

Default profiles (Administrator and User) belong to the file default_profiles.xml. This file can only contain default profiles. It cannot be renamed or deleted. Neither can be the default profiles within: only the mapping between default profiles and entities of the organization can be edited.

Only Subscription editions can create new file of profiles, in order to create custom profiles.

The purpose of grouping profiles in one file is to manage together profiles related to a same business application.
For example, if you want to create a leave management application for four kinds of users (Employees, Managers, Human Resources officers, and Administrators), then you will have to create four applications and four profiles, and to bind each profile to the related application. As for the four applications, the four profiles should be managed together, and so grouped in the same file of profiles.

Files of profiles are also handy to be used in different environments: you can create different files, with the same profile names, but each profile is mapped to different entities of the organization depending on the target environment. Therefore, you could have a "profiles_dev.xml", a "profiles_UAT.xml", and a "profiles_prod.xml" files of profiles.

Create and edit a profile

All Bonita subscription editions come with an .xml editor for this feature. Only Subscription editions also come with a graphical UI.

From Bonita Studio, use the new button in the Studio coolbar or click on Organization -> Profile -> New…​ It will create an empty file of profiles with a default name and open an editor. You can rename this file from the graphical UI, the project explorer or the menu Open.

The profile graphical UI provided is bound to the xml source, so you can use it to build your profile without writing xml.
You can switch from the graphical UI to the xml source at any moment, using the tabs Editor and Source at the bottom of the editor.
A toolbar is embedded to the editor, use it to:

  • Add a profile to profiles file: you can add a new profile or duplicate an existing one from your current project

  • Save profiles file As another profiles file (useful to duplicate the whole file)

  • Deploy profiles (i.e all the profiles in this file)
    âš  In production environment, you still need to import REST API Extensions manually before importing profiles file.

  • Rename profiles file

  • Export profiles file (download the .xml)

  • Delete profiles file from your current workspace

  • Manage the Organization: add users / groups / roles to the organization in order to map them to this profile

  • Restore the default file of profiles to its initial state (only available for the file default_profile.xml)

Using the graphical editor, you can set all the parameters of your profile.

The profile name has to be unique in a given file of profiles, else it will lead to conflicts when you will try to deploy the file of profiles.
You can duplicate a profile name in different files, but remember that you can only have one instance of a given profile in production.

In the mapping section you can map Users / Groups / Roles / Memberships to your profile. You have to map your profile with elements of an active organization.
âš  Nodes in the group tree are independent âš  It means that mapping /acme to your profile won’t map /acme/hr to it. Each node has to be mapped individually to be taken into account. However, you can easily add a whole part of your organization, using the add subtree button: select a node in the tree, and then click on add subtree.

The Applications section provides quick access to the applications mapped to this profile.
For adding an application to a profile, open the application and assign the required profile by using application descriptor editor.

Enable a profile

To enable a profile, it must be installed into the Bonita Administrator Application.
For development purposes, the Studio can deploy profiles into the Bonita Administrator Application for you (only for Subscription editions).
On a production environment, it is done via the Organization  Profiles tab of the Bonita Administrator Application.