Cisco Unified Communications Manager allows for very granular assignment of permissions, using the concept of roles and groups to assign specific permissions to users. A role is a list of permissions around a function, and a group is a list of roles, which can then be assigned to a user.

Permissions are assigned to Roles. An example of a role might be “Backup Administrator,” with permissions like “DRF Restore Warning Page,” “DRF Schedule Page,” “DRF Show Dependency Page,” and “DRF Show Status Page.” A role is specific to an application group, such as Cisco Unified Reporting, Cisco Call Manager Serviceability, or Cisco Call Manager Administration.

Permissions can include Read and Update, so a user could be given rights to view configuration elements, but not update them. This could be useful for auditing purposes, or for users that may need to verify a configuration, but not change it, such as a helpdesk user.

An Access Control Group contains a list of Roles. An Access Control Group might be something like “OS Administrators” which could include Roles like “Backup Administrator,” “LDAP Administrator,” etc. While a Role is specific to an Application, an Access Control Group can contain Roles from different Applications to create a comprehensive list of permissions, while limiting the number of groups a user must be assigned to to properly do their job.

Users are assigned to groups either in End Users configuration or in Access Control Group Configuration. Configuring in End User configuration is usually more efficient at assigning multiple groups to a user, while Access Control Group Configuration is going to be better for assigning multiple users to a single group.

Although you can see roles assigned to an end user in the End User Configuration Page, roles are not assigned directly to users. Users are assigned to groups, which contain roles, and the roles contain specific permissions within an application.

Configuration example after the fold.

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