Multi-User - SCOPE Enterprise

The SCOPE Enterprise license type is designed for large organisations that require concurrent access by multiple users to a SCOPE database. It enables storage of all your function point counts in a central repository that can be updated and /or viewed simultaneously by any number of SCOPE Enterprise and SCOPE Viewer users.

To avoid the issues of two users working on the same hierarchy at the same time and moving and changing components, SCOPE will lock a Release once it has been opened. I.e. As soon as a User opens a Count for a Release, that Release is locked by the User and no other Users will have access to it until the first User selects to exit the count or opens another Release in the same database. SCOPE displays the name of the User currently working on a count. Other Users can open and access any other Release in the Database that is not specifically Locked.

SCOPE Professional – has all the features of SCOPE Enterprise but operates in the same mode as previous versions of SCOPE and is ideal for organisations that prefer to store their SCOPE counts locally and only need single user access at any one time to the database.

Users can upgrade current licenses from SCOPE Professional to SCOPE Enterprise to take advantage of having global accessibility to your counts.

Permissions for read & write control

In SCOPE Enterprise 5.2, we introduced the ability to control read and write permissions by user groups and by application groups. Applications belong to groups to which user groups can be granted read, or read&write permission. These security permissions help organisations better manage access to their function point counts. If applications are not displayed, then it might be because you have not been granted access to those applications by your administrator.

How the security permissions work can be confusing to new users, especially how the permissions affect projects.

In SCOPE Enterprise, to manage user permissions, you need to be configured as an administrator. The first administrator is created by the database administrator, who enters a row into the "SecurityUsers" table in the SCOPE database. The row needs to contain the first administrator's user name, along with setting the "Administrator" field to true. Subsequently, the first administrator can delegate administration responsibilities to other administrators, with one proviso. The database administrator needs to grant access to the the Microsoft SQL Server role "scopeAdmin" to any user that is a SCOPE administrator.

User Management Concepts

Managing users relies on the following concepts. These are managed on a per-database basis through the "File -> Manage User Accounts" screen.

Application Group
An application group is a logical group of applications, to join an application into an application group, open the application's details and select the application group to join it to. An applcation belongs to just one application group. Note, that you can only move an application between application groups when you have write access to both the original and subsqeuent application group.
User Group
Are logical groups of users who have the same permissions to application groups. For example, members of the finance team will have access to similar application counts.
Permission
Permissions grant user groups access to application groups. The permissions may either be read or write. Write permission gives the users in the user group permission to read & write to applications in the application group. In some screen of SCOPE, the names of count sessions with a read-only permission are shown in orange text.

Projects

How the security permissions affect projects is more involved. A user has the ability to read a project, that is to see the project's details, if they have read-access or write-acess to every count session that belongs to the project. A user has write access to a project, for example the ability to add extra count sessions to the project, if they have the ability to write every count session that belongs to the project.

Unassigned Applications

If security permissions are being used, and an application does not belong to an application group, then the application will not appear in the application list. The application will be readable by no-one. The "Unassigned Applications" screen gives a list of the applications which do not currently belong to an application group. From this screen, unassigned applications can be bulk-assigned to application groups.