CRM User Security Overview
With the Really Simple Systems CRM you can have the added advantage of controlling your user security with the User Permission Levels feature.
CRM Users
Users can be either your people who can log into the CRM system, or “holding places” for Accounts that are currently not being dealt with by a specific person e.g. Marketing. You can have as many Users as you like but to access the CRM a user must be “Live”. See Add a New User for more information.
Price Plan Options
In the Free and Starter plans, all Users have “Read” and “Write” access to everything. This means they can view and edit all records.
In the Professional and Enterprise plans, you can increase security by limiting access for certain Users or User Groups. The User Permission Levels feature lets you set up User Groups, for example UK Sales and US Sales, and create User Profiles that can be allocated to individuals and to the User Groups.
Reporting
You can also restrict reporting access on the User record, to disallow a User from reporting their own customer accounts, on their User Group accounts or on global data, even if their User Profile has granted “Read” access. This would mean they would be unable to export any data from your CRM. This feature is available in all price plans, including the Free CRM.
With User Permission Levels enabled, you can set access levels for individual reports. Access can be limited to just the report owner, to your User Group or all users, with “Run Only” or “Run and Edit” access levels.
Data Import
N.B. If a User Profile allows Data Import then that User could inadvertently change data that they don’t have “Write” or editing access to. For that reason we recommend that only system Administrators are allowed to import data. To determine access for data import go to Settings / User Settings, then User Profiles. Open the User Profile to be edited and click the toggle button to “yes” or “no” for Allow Data Upload.
User Groups
Each User belongs to a User Group and has a User Profile. A User Group is a name such as “UK Sales”, “Marketing”, or “Management” and has no other properties. A User Profile will determine whether the User has “Read”, “Write” or no access to: their own Accounts; Accounts that belong to other Users in their User Group; and to all other Accounts.
You can group your Users into User Groups for both reporting and security. For example, you could have groups set for Field Sales and UK Sales and run a Sales Forecast report with a subtotal on the User Groups. Or you could set up the security so that Users in the same User Group can access each other Accounts, but not Accounts owned by Users of another User Group.
User Profiles and Permissions
User Profiles determine what access rights a User has. For example, the “Sales Person” User Profile might allow Users “Write” access to their own Accounts but only “Read” access to other Accounts, whereas as the “Sales Manager” User Profile would allow “Write” access to all Accounts.
User Profiles also allows you to set login access times to limit when users can log in to the CRM.
The purpose of having User Profiles, rather than recording the security settings on each User’s record, is so that security policies can be easily changed without having to edit each User’s details.
User Profiles and User Groups are available as standard in the Professional and Enterprise plan.
Set-up User Groups
When setting up your CRM system, first determine what User Groups you need. A typical structure would be to have one User Group for each sales team, one for the marketing team and one for management/administration. The sales teams would hold all the customer and prospect contacts, the marketing team would hold the contacts for any leads that have not been allocated to the sales teams, press contacts and external agencies, and the management/administration group would hold the suppliers and other contacts.
To set up your User Groups, in the Settings tab, go to User Settings and select User Groups. Click on the blue Add button, give the group a name and Save.
Set-up User Profiles
With your User Groups set up, the next step is to establish your User Profiles to determine what access level you want to grant each User. For small organisations, it is normal to allow all users “Read” and “Write” access to all Accounts. For larger organisations, you may want to allow each sales person to have “Write” access to their own Accounts, “Read” access to those in their User Group and no access to other Accounts. Sales Managers would then have their own User Profile that would allow them “Read” and “Write” access to all Accounts in their User Group, and Read access only to all other Accounts.
To set up your User Profiles, in the Settings tab, go to User Settings and select User Profiles. Click on the blue Add button and use the dropdown menu to set the access you require.
Set Login Access Time
In the same screen you can also limit the hours of access to the CRM for that User Profile. Click on the field boxes titled “Login Access Allowed From” and “Login Access Allowed To” and use the time selector to set the times when login access is permitted
Set-up Users
After setting up the User Groups and Profiles you are ready to create the Users. Set up a User Record for each person that will be accessing the system, see Add a New User, and then set up a few “holding places” or dummy users to hold Accounts that don’t have a day to day manager, such as Marketing and Suppliers. Remember to flag the latter as Not Live so they don’t count towards to the total number of Users that your user license covers.
Select the User Group and User Profile for each User from the dropdown fields.
For those Users who are sales managers or sales directors, grant them Group or Global access so that they can report on the consolidated information across their Group or all Accounts respectively.
User Profiles and User Groups are available on the Professional and Enterprise plans.