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Contact Group Sharing Walk-through

In this walk-through, we'll show you how to create a Contact Group and share it with the other users in your account. We'll then show you how to control which of your account users can see the Contact Group, and which can work with it. Once you've mastered sharing Contact Groups, you should be able to work the sharing system for Diaries, Task Lists and Email Folders, as they work according to the same principles.

Create a Contact Group

Run the MyOffice windows client as per normal. If you've got MyOffice configured to show the Contacts window on startup, then you'll already be in the right place. If not, then click the "Contacts" button on the toolbar, or select "Contacts" from the "Window" menu to show the Contacts window.

With the contacts window now showing, create a new Contact Group. This can be accomplished either by clicking the "New Contact Group" button on the toolbar (it's the button second from the left), or by right-clicking in the "Contact Group List" on the left side of the contacts window, and selecting "New Group" from the context menu.

The following dialog - the Contact Group Details dialog - will now appear.

 

Now enter your preferred name for this Contact Group in the "Group Name" field. Before you click "OK", take a look at the text below the "Log Emails involving Contacts in this Group as Contact Activities" checkbox. This shows that the Contact Group you are about to create will be shared with all the users in your account, and those users will be able to both "read" from it and "write" to it. For those not familiar with permissions systems, "Read" (or "Read Only") means a user will be able to see the data in the list in question, but will not be able to alter it. "Write" (or "Read\Write") means a user will be able to be both see the data, and also edit it. Now, click "OK".

The Contact Group you've created will now appear in the "Contact Group List" on the left of the Contacts window, with a small green tick on the icon. This green tick indicates that you (as in, the user you are currently connected to MyOffice as) are able to write to the Contact Group.

Because this Contact Group was set up to allow all users on your account to have read and write access to it, all other users in your account should be able to see this group and work with it. If you want to test this, close MyOffice, and log on as another user in your account. You should see the Contact Group you created in exactly the same place as you created it. If you want to continue to work with your Contact Group's permissions, close MyOffice and log on with the user you were using initially.

Tip - If you're not sure which user you've connected to MyOffice with, open the "Help" menu and select "Who am I?". This will show you which user (and account, if you have more than one) you are currently connected to MyOffice with.  

Controlling Permissions

Now we've created a Contact Group, and we've got it shared with all the other members of the account, it's time to restrict which members of the account can work with the Contact Group.

First, open the Contact Group  for editing. This can be done either by double-clicking on the Contact Group in the Contact Group List on the left side of the main Contacts window, or by right-clicking on the Contact Group in the Contact Group List on the left side of the main Contacts window, and selecting "Edit" from the context menu. 

Once the Contact Group Details dialog is open, select the "Permissions" tab. You'll see a checkbox at the top of the tab page called "Assign security permissions to this Contact Group". It is currently unchecked. When there is no check in this checkbox, all the users in your account have read and write permission for the Contact Group in question.

To begin assigning security permissions to this Contact Group, check this checkbox. This can be accomplished by left clicking the checkbox.

 

With the checkbox checked, three lists appear on the Permissions tab. These are named "No Access", "Read and Write Access", and "Read Only Access". Users listed in the "No Access" list are unable to see this Contact Group, those in the "Read and Write Access" list can see this Contact Group and create, edit and delete Contacts in this Contact Group, and those in "Read Only Access" can see the Contacts in this Contact Group, but cannot change them. As we can see, when we first check the "Assign security permissions to this Contact Group" checkbox, all the users in the account are in the "No Access" list, so if we press "OK" now, no-one will be able to see the Contact Group.

To change the permissions for a given user, the user in question should be moved to the appropriate list. This can be accomplished either by dragging the user to the desired list (select the desired user, hold down the left mouse button, and move the cursor over the desired list, and let go of the left mouse button), or by selecting the desired user and pressing the arrow button that points towards the desired list.

 

In the example above, the user called "Admin" (which, in this example, is me) has been moved to the "Read and Write Access" list, and the user called "David Gentry" has been move to the "Read Only Access" list. When "OK" is pressed, this Contact Group will not be visible to all the users in the "No Access" list, David Gentry will be able to see the Contact Group and any Contacts therein, but will not be able to alter the Contacts, and the Admin user will be able to see this Contact Group and create, edit and delete any Contacts in this list.

The Contact Group Admin window

As we've seen above, it's possible to configure a Contact Group in such a way as to make it invisible to your own user. If you wish to set your Contact Groups up in this manner (there can be very sound business reasons for this), then you obviously won't be able to work with them in your Contact Group List in the main Contacts window. To work with these groups, open the "Tools" menu in the main Contacts window, and select "Contact Group Admin".

 

From this window, you are able to perform Contact Group Admin operations on all of your account's Contact Groups, even those which you do not have permission to see.