An important part of the SharePoint platform is its permission system. SharePoint allows administrators to manage permissions on many levels. Administrators can assign permissions to a user based on a site collection, based on a site, based on a list, or even based on an item. Most of the time, the SharePoint permission system is strong enough to control the user’s permissions. But in some cases, some columns in certain items need to be hidden according to a specified user, at the same time it should be visible to other users. This is where the SharePoint permission system fails as it cannot meet these kinds of demands.
BoostSolutions Column/View Permission is designed to solve these kinds of issues and can give a more detailed permission setting based on columns. An administrator can set permissions to a dynamic user related to an item. For example, an administrator can specify that an item’s [Assign To] cannot modify the [Assign to] Column. An administrator can even go further by specifying users using conditions. This article will show you how to hide the [title] column for a specific user, in this example, called a1.
To start, you need to go to the settings page of the list which you want to use to specify permission to a user. In the settings page, you will find a link called Column Permission Setting. You need to click this link to enter the settings page. You can also enter the settings page by clicking the ribbon button on the list’s ribbon.
After entering the settings page, you will find a list of permission parts that look like this:
The main part of the settings page lists all the permission parts for this list. There are four buttons at the top of the permission parts table. From left to right, they are Add Permission Part, Export, Import and Advanced Setting. From this page, you can add permission parts, delete permission parts, and activate or deactivate a permission part. You can also set the permission setting as enabled or disabled. If the permission setting is disabled, the permission setting will not work until you enable it again. Note that you can deactivate only one permission part.
Let us click the Add Permission Part button and enter the Add Permission Part page. This page consists of three parts as shown below:
In the Include Users part, you can specify the user whom you want to set column permissions to. If you select the radio button All users, this permission part’s column permission setting will take effect on all users except the site administrators and system account. If you select Only the following user, you can specify which users using a number of methods including specifying the user’s name.
In the above picture, I specified a user by entering the user’s name in the Select Users/Groups box. This is the most basic way to specify a user. There are also some more advanced ways to specify users. First you need to enter the Select more users dialogue box by clicking on the icon below the Select Users/Groups box. Then you check the Include anonymous users checkbox. If you do this then anonymous access to the columns will need to be verified in column permission too. BoostSolutions Column Permission also allows you to specify a dynamic user by selecting the user columns. For example, you can specify the [Created By], [Assigned To] or other user columns. When a user accesses an item, the specified user columns will be adjusted according to the real users. So, the columns will automatically adjust according to which user is accessing content and the columns’ will change as the users change.
You can select the looked lists’ user columns too. What you need to do is select the Show user/group columns in other lists related to lookup columns in this list. If you select Include Lookup Columns, the lookup list user columns will be listed under the current list’s user columns.