Currently In Feature Preview
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Currently In Feature Preview

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Article summary

Feature preview gives our users a unique opportunity to evaluate select enhancements to Agility Blue that are under development and being tested for general availability.

Enabling Feature Preview

To enable feature preview, click on your user icon menu while in a workspace and select the "Enable Feature Preview" menu option. You can tell that you're in feature preview mode when you see the text "Feature Preview Enabled" on the top left of the screen.

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To disable feature preview, click on your user icon menu while in a workspace and select the "Disable Feature Preview" menu option.

Current Features Available In Feature Preview

Matter Security

Administrators now have the ability to configure access to matters based on user roles and explicit allow/deny lists. Changing a matter's access will affect whether or not specific users can see them within Agility Blue, including any items that are directly association with them. This can be useful in a variety of scenarios, such as information barriers where specific users should not be able to view matters due to need to know, conflicts, or contractual obligations; or portal request scenarios where you would like your portal users to select matters that only pertain to them. To facilitate these types of scenarios, there are 2 new areas that can be used to configure matter access: The roles settings on the permissions section of the workspace settings page and the security tab on any matter settings page.

Important!

You will need to be an organization administrator or belong to a permissions group that grants view rights to the matter security permission in order to configure matter security. The workspace administrators permissions group has this setting enabled by default, but all other permissions groups do not have this permission granted. Note that the permissions group will need to have the "Settings" permission granted in order to grant the "Security" permission.

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Effects of not having access to a matter

Users that do not have access to a matter have the following effects:

  • The user cannot see the matter in the matter grid views, matter details page, and it will not show up in searches.
  • Any projects related to the matter will not be visible.
  • Any tasks related to the matter will not be visible. This also affects items directly associated with tasks such as comments and emails.
  • Any billing entries that are associated with the matter, either directly with the matter or from a descendant project/task, will not be visible.
  • Any media log entries that are associated with the matter, either directly with the matter or from a descendant project/task, will not be visible.
  • Any volumes that are associated with the matter, either directly with the matter or from a descendant project/task, will not be visible.
  • Any attachments that are associated with the matter, either directly with the matter or from a descendant project/task, will not be visible.
  • If the user has permissions to run reports the user may see information about matters that they don't have access to within the app.
  • Any custom object that references a matter will still show that reference within the grid that contains the matter name and matter reference id. However, if the user tries to view more details about the referenced matter, they will be presented with a "not found" error.
  • Members of the organization administrator role have access to all matters and are not affected by matter security settings.

Users do not need to have feature preview enabled to experience the effects of matter security. Feature preview is only required to expose the tools needed to apply matter security.

Setting up the default access rules for matters

Default matter access can be configured for organization users and portal users. Agility Blue distinguishes these users based on the roles that are applied each user. Users that have the organization user role are categorized as organization users whereas users that only have the portal user role are categorized as portal users. Portal users are users that have access to the request portal. You can ignore settings specific to portal users If your organization doesn't license the request portal.

Default access to matters is initially granted for all user roles and all matters have default access applied unless changed at the matter level. You can change the default access for users that have either the organization user role or portal user role by navigating to the workspace settings page, clicking on the permissions section (2nd tab on the left that looks uses a lock icon), and then selecting the "Roles" tab.

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The two roles can be configured to either allow or deny access to matters by default. Changing a role from allow to deny would prevent users in that role from seeing or selecting any matter by default. You would then need to update the security access state of specific matters to grant access

Important!

User roles are not the same as workspace permissions! User roles are more broad and applied at the user account level within the "Home" > "Users" area of the application. It's possible to have organization users that belong to the workspace administrators permissions group within a workspace and not have access to a matter. The matter access feature is role-based or explicitly user list-based and workspace permissions have different responsibilities and effects.

Configuring individual matter security

After determining default matter access for the organization and portal user roles, you can then change the access state for specific matters by navigating to a matter's details page, clicking on the settings section (sliders icon tab towards the end on the left), and then selecting the "Security" tab.

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Matters will be configured with "Default Access" when created. This means that the default access for organization and portal user roles will be applied, which can be seen in the table showing each role. To change the access state for this matter, click on the access state drop down and select between the following 7 options, depending on the level of granularity needed:

  • Default Access
    Default access for organization users and portal users can be configured on the settings page under the permissions section roles tab as outlined previously. Users with the organization administrator role will have access regardless of this setting. A table of read-only entries will indicate what the current default access is for each role.
  • Everyone
    All users have access to this matter. A table of read-only entries will list out the users with access.
  • All Organization Admins
    Users with the organization administrator role are allowed to access this matter. Users without this role will not have access to this matter. A table of read-only entries will list out the users with access.
  • All Organization Users
    Users with the organization administrator or organization user roles are allowed to access this matter. Users that only have the portal user role will not have access to this matter. A table of read-only entries will list out the users with access.
  • Select Portal Users
    In addition to users with the organization administrator and organization user roles, you can select and add portal users that are allowed to see and select this matter while creating requests from the request portal. Portal users not listed will not have access to this matter. A table of read-only entries will list out the organization users with access. A button will be available to add portal users. Portal users added to the list will be granted access to select this matter while creating requests from the portal and can be removed from the access table at any time.
  • Allow List
    An explicit list of users/teams that are allowed to access this matter (opt-in). Users or teams not listed will not have access to this matter. Users with the organization administrator role will have access regardless of this setting. A button will be available to add users or teams and a table of entries will list out the users with access.
  • Deny List
    An explicit list of users/teams that are not allowed to access this matter (opt-out). Users or teams not listed will have access to this matter. Users with the Organization administrator role will have access regardless of this setting. A button will be available to add users or teams and a table of entries will list out the users without access.

Below is an example of a matter with the access state set to "Allow List"
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In this example, default access is no longer applied to the matter and only the users or teams that are added using the "Add Users/Teams" button are allowed to see this matter. To the left of the button, you can use the trash icon to remove all entries or refresh the entries using the resync icon. If a team is added, all users within that team will be considered for access. You may see a green badge with the letter "P" next to a user's name in the list of entries like in the example above. This indicates that the user is a portal-only user and only has access to the request portal. Each entry that was added through the "Add Users/Teams" button can also be individually removed using the trash icon to the right of each entry. An entry with a blue border on the left indicates that the entry was added and not generated.

Configuring security to multiple matters

Access states can be configured across multiple matters by using the multi-actions button on the matters grid. Enter multi-edit mode on the grid by clicking on the multi-edit toggle button at the top right of the grid. Select the matters that you would like to apply security to and then click on the the lighting bolt icon on the grid toolbar to bring up the multi-action window.

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Choose from the dropdown list one of the following available actions:

  • Change Access State...
    You will be presented with a dropdown list of the 7 available access states that are listed in the previous section. Selecting one of these options will change the access state of your selected matters to the option you choose.
  • Apply Access State Users/Teams (Merge Existing)...
    You will be presented with a multi-selection window where the users you select will be merged with the existing user lists within each selected matter. The lists are only effective for matters that have "Select Portal Users", "Allow List", or "Deny List" access states applied.
  • Apply Access State Users/Teams (Replace Existing)...
    You will be presented with a multi-selection window where the users you select will replace any users that were previously added within each selected matter. The lists are only effective for matters that have "Select Portal Users", "Allow List", or "Deny List" access states applied.
  • Remove All Access State Users/Teams
    Choosing this action will clear out any users that were previously added to any user lists. The lists are only effective for matters that have "Select Portal Users", "Allow List", or "Deny List" access states applied.

Note that changing the access state to an option that supports a managed list of users will likely require two steps. First, you would change the access state, then you would need to reselect the matters you just changed and apply access to the list of users you would like to access those matters.

Viewing and filtering matters for access

While in feature preview, the matters grid will have an additional field that you can use named "Access State" that allows you to filter for matters that have specific states, default access only, or non-default access. Use the filter menu on the column to choose which filter you would like to apply.

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By using the "Equals" or "Not Equals" options, you can then select between one of the specific access states.