SAS Metadata Security – Page 2

Adding Metacoda Custom Tasks Capabilities for SAS Enterprise Guide

When you install Metacoda Custom Tasks for use in SAS® Enterprise Guide® and the SAS® Add-In for Microsoft Office you may find you don’t see the new menu items you expected in the Tools menu:

There are 2 main reasons why they may be missing: 1) the custom tasks could not be loaded, perhaps due to an issue during installation; and 2) you are not being granted access to the custom tasks due to your metadata roles and capabilities. The first issue is usually quite easy to resolve. This post is about the second scenario because it can be somewhat harder to troubleshoot.

Roles and capabilities are used in the SAS platform to control access to SAS application features such as menu items in SAS Enterprise Guide. In a new SAS platform installation the PUBLIC group (which includes everyone) is a member of the Enterprise Guide: Advanced role, and that role grants all capabilities for SAS Enterprise Guide. That means, by default, all users have access to all of the controllable features in SAS Enterprise Guide. Some SAS customers change this, as may be required for their security plan, by removing the PUBLIC group and replacing it with more appropriate groups for their environment, and perhaps create additional roles with the required capabilities. It is in this scenario where you may find your capability set is preventing access to the Metacoda Custom Tasks. Continue reading “Adding Metacoda Custom Tasks Capabilities for SAS Enterprise Guide”

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: hasPermissionCondition

This post continues a series of examples on Advanced Expression-Based Filters for Metacoda Plug-ins. The recent Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R2 release added support for a new hasPermissionCondition boolean attribute that can be used in any filter bar on a table of Access Control Entries (ACEs), such as the ACE Reviewer.

You can copy and paste the following into the filter bar of the Metacoda ACE Reviewer to only show ACEs that include permissions conditions, such as those used for SAS OLAP Member-Level Permissions, BI Row-Level Permissions, or Visual Analytics Conditional Grants:

#@ hasPermissionCondition

Here is an example of it in action:

ACE Reviewer hasPermissionCondition

Of course, if required, you can also negate it to filter out those rows with permission conditions:

#@ !hasPermissionCondition

If you have any questions about Metacoda Plug-ins, Advanced Expression-Based Filters, or hasPermissionCondition please leave a comment below.

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Compare Metadata Objects

One of the new additions in the recently released Metacoda Plug-ins 6.1 R2 is a Compare Metadata Objects feature. This is a something that several customers have requested, particularly for the comparison of SAS metadata security objects like ACTs, Users, Groups, and Roles. One of the most common requests was to be able to compare users, who are supposed to be almost identical, but are found to have different access. Being able to compare the two users to see which groups they have, or don’t have, in common helps to speed up troubleshooting.

With the new Compare Metadata Objects dialog, you can compare any two metadata objects to show similarities and differences. Whilst it can be used to do a basic comparison of any 2 metadata objects, specific attention has been given to aid in the comparison of security objects, including ACT Permission Patterns, ACT and ACE participation, applied ACTs and ACEs, user/group membership of groups and roles, and members of groups and roles.

There are several ways to access this feature. The first is to use SAS Management Console Tools menu:

… this opens the comparison dialog where you can proceed to search for, and select, the two objects you want to compare. Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Compare Metadata Objects”

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: User’s Group Content Admin Permissions (Identity Permissions Explorer)

This tip was prompted by a SAS Communities question which I hear from time to time, essentially “How do I find out which groups a SAS user is a Portal Group Content Administrator for?” It can be answered using the Metacoda Identity Permissions Explorer but involves a few steps so I will outline them here.

To quote the SAS® 9.4 Intelligence Platform: Web Application Administration Guide, Group Content Administrator section:

A group content administrator is a user who has WriteMetadata permission for the respective group, and the group’s Portal permission tree. A group content administrator can share personal content with the group, and can edit or remove content that has been shared with the group. (Portal administrators have WriteMetadata permission for all group permission trees that are defined in metadata.)

So, to find out which groups a user is group content admin for, we need to look for all of the group portal permission trees where the user has a grant of the WM permission. This can be done quickly and easily using the Metacoda Identity Permissions Explorer. Below is a screenshot with numbered steps where we find out which groups Aaron Atkins (demoaaron), a fictitious Business Analyst, is a Portal Group Content Administrator for. Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: User’s Group Content Admin Permissions (Identity Permissions Explorer)”

Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (Protected Object Reviewer)

This post continues a series of examples on Advanced Expression-Based Filters for Metacoda Plug-ins, in this case for the Protected Object Reviewer.

Here are some expressions that you may find useful to copy and paste into the filter bar of the Metacoda Protected Object Reviewer as a starting point for finding interesting sets of SAS metadata objects that have had access controls, Access Control Templates (or ACTs) and/or Access Control Entries (ACEs or explicit permissions), applied to them:

Protected Tree Branch Objects: show folders and objects, underneath the /Vegas Enterprises metadata tree branch, that have had any ACTs or ACEs applied to them.

#@ path.startsWith("/Vegas Enterprises")

ACT Protected Tree Branch Objects: show folders and objects, underneath the /Vegas Enterprises metadata tree branch, that have had ACTs applied (and optionally ACEs). Continue reading “Metacoda Plug-ins Tip: Advanced Expression-Based Filters (Protected Object Reviewer)”