Getting Rid of the Favorites Folder For Good

security CMC
1

I have removed access to the Favorites Folder by leaving it unassigned in the InfoView rights.

The problem is that when a user chooses to do a Save As or access the repository the default folder is still the Favorites Folder. This creates the problem where if the user is not paying attention, they will save a document to their Favorites Folder and then can’t access it.

How to I get rid of it for good?

CalDoug :us: (BOB member since 2009-01-12)

2

Look into the possiblity of modifying the asp/jsp pages which the page in Infoview is referring to, there can be a way out

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haider :es: (BOB member since 2005-07-18)

3

I opened a ticket with SAP about this issue. The tech support person told me that I would have to modify each individual’s favorites folder access. I then explained how that would be impossible to sustain in my organization with hundreds of users and sub-admins that will be adding new users themselves. They said they would get back to me today.

I’m not going to hold my breath. I’ll update this thread with their answer when I get it.

CalDoug :us: (BOB member since 2009-01-12)

4

Did you make sure that the right is actually denied in InfoView. Unassigned does not always yields a denied access.
I tested it on BOXIR2 SP4 and the Favorites folder is no longer visible.

Rachid

rachidb :morocco: (BOB member since 2006-07-06)

5

My ticket was updated but no answer yet from SAP:

Had webex with Doug

–Customer informed that they denied the ‘View Favorite folder’ right from Infoview application in CMC.
–when they login to infoview as a normal user then they could not see the Favorites folder.
–He informed that when they open a report in infoview and click on ‘Save as’, the they could see the Favorite folder to which they could save the report.
–Also he informed they could the Favorite folder even from Desktop Intelligence, Report conversion tool and Rich client.
–He informed that they do not want to see the Favorite folder even when saving a report.
–We informed him that as every user has Full control access on one’s own personal folder , hence they can still see the Favorite Folder while saving a report.
–We informed him that we can explicitly deny the rights to save on each personal folder but not globally.
–We also informed that we would once again confirm the same and give him an update tomorrw and he agreed to the same.

CalDoug :us: (BOB member since 2009-01-12)

6

I just got off the phone with SAP. We are at an impass. I made my argument this way:

  1. I explicity deny view right to the favorites folder in my access levels.
  2. According to all literature that I have seen from SAP on BO administration, explicit denies takes precidence over all other rights.
  3. The folder is hidden most of the time in InfoView except in a few select circumstance.
  4. Therefore it is a bug that the folder is viewable.

SAP says:

  1. All users have full control over their personal folder
  2. You can deny access to it by doing so on each individual user.
  3. This is working as intended.

The SAP rep did say that in a future release, SAP may fix this problem. At least she admitts that it is a problem. Until then, I will have to warn my users that anything saved to the favorites folder is not accessable and to be aware that the favorites folder is the default save folder in many circumstances.

CalDoug :us: (BOB member since 2009-01-12)

7

Actually, it sounds like you did get an answer, you just didn’t like it! While having a configurable default for personal folder access sounds like a reasonable request, the fact remains that there is no such functionality at the moment. One solution would be an SDK job that would systematically remove (set to No Access) a user’s rights on their own personal folder.

Dwayne Hoffpauir :us: (BOB member since 2002-09-19)

8

You can always go to CMC–>BusinessObjects Enterprise Applications–>Infoview, select the “Advanced Rights” of the particular group, check “Not Specified” (if you are using Closed System) for “View the favorite folder” (I do the same on “view the inbox” as well, but it is up to you). This will keep the users in that group from accessing their favorite folders.

In my humble opinion, Inbox and Favorite folders are bad thing from administration point of view. Every time when someone leaves the company, you have to move the contents. And contents in those folders are not archivable using BIAR. I can go on and on, but you should get the picture. Instead, you should create departmental folders for the users to store their reports, which is a better set up.

Hope this helps.

substring :us: (BOB member since 2004-01-16)