Managing access to Author reports

There are four main types of Diligent ESG Author user roles that can be created; Administrators, Contributors, Reviewers and View/Edit Only users.

  • Administrators are responsible for creating reports and assigning users as either Contributors or Reviewers. Administrators can also act as Reviewers.

  • Contributors are responsible for providing content that is used for building up reports.

  • Reviewers are responsible for reviewing and approving content provided by contributors.

  • View/Edit Only users are responsible for either viewing or editing content similar to a Contributor or Reviewer however they do not have the added functionality to change the status of a section.

If you have been assigned within Diligent ESG Author role of either an Administrator, Contributor, or a Reviewer, you will have the added functionality to be able to change the ‘Status’ of the section that they have been assigned to. See the section on ‘Approval Process’ for more information about what each status means.

Access levels for role

A user can gain access to a particular section through the following access levels:

  • View

  • Edit

  • Admin

View

The user can view the name of the section, the guidance incorporated into that section (within the Info Panels) and any new content that has been added by Contributor and Reviewers. They cannot change the content of the section in any way.

Edit

The user has the same access as a user with View access, while they can also add, remove, and amend content/responses within that section. However, they cannot change the name of the section or the structure of that section including the guidance and the question type, such as whether the section is an Editor style section, drop-down list section, or a table section.

Admin

The user can both view and have edit access to that particular section, however they can also switch to view the section as an Administrator and therefore change the name of that section, the structure of the section including the guidance provided within the Info Panels and change the drop-down list options, whether the question is an Editor Style or Survey Style section.

Users do not necessarily have to be assigned as a Contributor or a Reviewer in order to gain access to either view, edit or have admin access to a particular section. If assigning a user with View access to a section, this allows them to view the section however they cannot change the status of the section. They will also not receive email notifications advising them if the status of a section has changed.

If assigned access to a section as a Contributor or Reviewer, they will automatically be given view and edit access to that particular section. As stated in the previous section, these users will have the added functionality to change the status of a section.

Approval process in corporate reports

Approval Process

ACTION REQUIRED

↓

AWAITING REVIEW

↓

REQUIRES REVISION

↓

APPROVED

There are four main options for which a status can be set to which are Action Required, Awaiting Review, Required Revision, or Approved.

  • Administrators can change the status of section to any of the available options. If they do not wish to set a status this can be set as Select One where no status is essentially set.

  • Contributors can change the status of a section from Action Required to Awaiting Review.

  • Reviewers can change the status of a section from Awaiting Review to either Requires Revision or Approved.

Those who are assigned to View or Edit sections but are not Contributors or Reviewers cannot change the status of a section.

Managing user groups

In Diligent ESG Author, if you are an administrator, you can group user permissions into custom groups. As an administrator, You can create a group of users who have the same permissions. Similarly, if you are only providing one user with unique set of permissions compared to all other users, you still need to assign that user to a particular group.

Assigning users within a group helps to avoid the duplication of effort where Administrators would need to assign a number of users to the same level of access individually. You can create a group of users within the User Group Management tab of the User Access area. You can assign a group of users to either only one report, or alternatively to multiple reports.

Each user within the group has the same level of view, edit, or administration access as all other users in that group. If you add a new user to a particular group, they automatically gain the same level of access as all other users previously assigned to that group.

Note

If other members of the group are assigned as a Contributor or a Reviewer, any new users do not automatically gain this access. You need to either manually assign this access or provide it to them using the Bulk Import feature.

Before you can add a user to a group and provide them with access to particular sections within a report, you must complete the following:

  1. Create a new user or update an existing user to have an Accuvio Author User role. A new user receives an automatic email with an activation link. The user needs to have a Diligent ESG login username and password and this role. For further information about creating users, go to Managing user access.

  2. Locate and open the corporate report in Author. For further information, go to Opening a corporate report.

Note

You can only grant user permissions on a report-by-report basis. To provide users with access to many reports, you need to go into each individual report separately.

Creating a group of users manually

The first method of creating specific user permissions is the Manual method. User permissions are completed on an individual case-by-case basis method.

This is most useful if you only have a small number of users gaining access to a small number of sections. This is also useful if you are simply adding a new user to an already established group.

Creating a group of users

You can create a group of users who have the same level of access. You can add as many users as you require into a single group. Groups appear in the Groups field and when you select any of the groups, the users who are in that group appear in the Users field.

  1. At the top of the Author screen, select the User Access icon and select User Group Management tab.

    2. Note

    The User Access icon and corresponding sections are available from within any type of report.

  2. In the Add New Group field, enter the name of the group, and select Add New Group to create this new group.

    3. Note

    You can find the groups that appear in the User Group Management tab within all reports.

  3. In the Groups field, select the name of a group to add users to that group.

    4. Note

    In the Groups field, an Administrators group has already been created within your account in which Administrators have been added.

  4. Select the Select one dropdown, select a user, select Add User, and select OK to finish. Users who have access to Diligent ESG Author appear in this list.

Providing permissions to the group

After you create a group with all relevant users, then you need to provide this group with the relevant access permissions. You can provide a group with access to individual sections within a report or with access to the entire report. These permissions include whether they will have View, Edit, and Admin access.

  1. Select User Group Permissions tab.

  2. In the dropdown, select the group that you want to provide permissions to.

  3. Select the Edit icon beside the section you want to provide access permissions to and activate email notifications for.

  4. Select the View, Edit, or Admin access checkboxes in the row that you want to provide access. If you want to provide the group with access to the full report and all of the sections within it, in the report row, labelled Report: [Report Name], select the View, Edit, or Admin access checkboxes. To provide the group with access to individual sections, then select the View, Edit, or Admin access checkboxes in the row of the individual section.

  5. Select the Contributor or Reviewer checkboxes to activate email notifications for that report or section. If the group has not been assigned as a Contributor or Reviewer, the group will not receive the notifications and you can ignore these columns.

  6. In the first column, select the Update icon to save the access and notification changes.

Assigning users as a Contributor or Reviewer

You can manually assign a user as either a Contributor or a Reviewer so that they can change the status of sections accordingly.

Important

You can assign a user as a Contributor or a Reviewer, but not at the same time.

  1. After you provide the group of users with access to their relevant sections, navigate to the relevant report and the section that you want to assign a user as a Contributor or Reviewer.

  2. Right-click on the section title, hover over Assign to User, and select As Contributor or As Reviewer.

  3. In the Assign Contributor or Assign Reviewer window, in the Unassigned field, select a user, and select the To Right icon to assign a user as a contributor or reviewer to this section.

  4. Select Done when you have assigned all the relevant users to this particular section.

  5. (Optional) In the Assigned field, select a user, and select on the To Left icon to un-assign a user.

Note

Any user who you assign to a section will receive an email notification advising them that they have been assigned to a section. They only receive subsequent emails about status changes, if you selected the Contributor or Reviewer checkboxes for that section or report within the User Group Permissions tab. If you assign a user as a Contributor or Reviewer to multiple sections within a single day, then that user only receives a single email at the end of the day. This email outlines all the relevant sections that the user has been assigned to.

Creating a group of users in bulk

You can create a group of users for the Author module using an Excel template. You can bulk import user permissions and groups to an individual report using one Excel upload. This is useful if there is a large number of users gaining access to different sections in a report with various different permissions.

This method of uploading user permissions automatically creates groups of users within the report and assigns users as either Contributors, Reviewers, or provides access individually to View, Edit or have Admin access to individual sections within a report.

Downloading the Permissions Excel Template

You need to download a Permissions Excel Template to begin creating a group of users with the same level of access.

  1. In Author, select the the User Access icon and select the Bulk Import tab.

  2. Select the Download the Permissions Template icon. This downloads an Excel template to your computer which is specific to your report.

Using the Permissions Excel Template

The Excel template should have the following characteristics:

  • Six columns labelled Section Name, Contributor, Reviewer, View, Edit, and Admin.

  • The Section Name column should contain every section within your report.

Note

You do not need to assign a user to all sections. If there are blank cells within this Excel template for certain sections, this template will still upload to the system without errors. You can enter more than one user into each cell under each column. To enter more than one user email address, separate user email addresses with a comma (,).

  1. When you open the Excel template from your desktop, you may need to select Enable Editing in order to edit this template.

  2. In the Contributor (B) column, enter the email addresses of the users that you want to assign as Contributors to each section or the entire report.

  3. In the Reviewer (C) column, enter the email addresses of the users that you want to assign as Reviewers.

    4. Note

    When assigning a user as a Contributor or Reviewer to a section, they automatically receive both View and Edit access to that section. They receive one email notification advising them of all the sections that they have been assigned. These users will not receive further email notifications until you turn on email notifications to their respective group within the User Group Permissions tab.

  4. In the View (D) column, enter the email addresses of the users that you want to assign with View access. Separate user email addresses with a comma (,).

  5. In the Edit (E) column, enter the email addresses of the users that you want to assign with Edit access.

  6. In the Admin (F) column, enter the email addresses of the users that you want to assign with Admin access.

  7. Save your updated file on your computer.

Uploading Your Permissions Excel Template

Note

If you need to use the bulk upload more than once for a particular report, you can go through the process as stated above. The system will not create new groups, it will detect that the group has already been assigned and will simply add the new users to their respective groups.

  1. After you complete entering the usernames within your Excel template, in Author, navigate to the User Permissions Settings tab, and select the Bulk Import tab.

  2. Select Upload Permissions, select the Permissions Excel Template from your computer, and select Open.

  3. Select OK.

After the upload completes, in the Progress column, the uploaded file changes from Uploading to Complete. When you navigate to the User Group Management tab again, new user groups have been created. The system creates three individual groups for each section of your report, whereby for each section of the report, three further groups are created for the user access levels; View, Edit, and Admin.

If you have assigned a user as a Contributor or a Reviewer, they can now change the status of the sections for which they have been assigned.

Activating email notifications for Contributors/Reviewers

  1. Select the User Group Permissions tab.

  2. In the dropdown, select the group that you want to activate email notifications for.

  3. Select the Edit icon beside the section you want to provide access permissions to and activate email notifications for.

  4. For the sections for which the users have been assigned as Contributor and/or Reviewer, select the Contributor or Reviewer checkboxes to activate email notifications for that report or section

  5. In the first column, select the Update icon to save the notification changes.