Roles & Authorizations for Web Reports...

Question

Hello Experts,
We are newly implementing Web Reports in our organization. I need your great thoughts regarding implementing Authorizations for users to access the reports.
We are using a report menu page that contain links to all the reports. The page opens by clicking on a link on the portal. The individual reports are basically accessed from this page by clicking on the corresponding button (links a URL ).
I wonder if there is any way to look into the menu page (XHTML code of that web page/application) when ever the users click on the reports link and disable those buttons that the users are not allowed to access depending on the roles users are assigned to. Otherwise is there any better way to do it.
And also how to call a function from web applications.
This is a kind of urgent issue any quick ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I apologize for the difficulty in reading this  I will repost.
We have had no training or received any documenation on WAD.  The below was created from internet research.  Hence there may be WAD functionality that would allow easier maintenance, however; this is what we use.
With our dashboard, I have a web template that contains hyperlinks for our reports.  I will call this HeaderTemplate1.  For each web page I have report templates.  These report templates have the HeaderTemplate1 mentioned above as well as the report tables, charts, text elements, tabs, etc.
The JavaScript logic for accessing the urls of the specific report templates is contained within our HeaderTemplate1.
Below is how our setup was tested.  Keep in mind, this was only for testing basic functionality.  If this is something we use I will most likely create a master data table that houses the user ID and an attribute for the header type.  Thus, any report menu changes can be altered quickly without changing the javascript of each report template.  Also this will accomodate the few thousand users we have.
To add the functionality of different 'menus', I created another header template with the same hyperlinks of HeadertTemplate1 with the exception of one or two hyperlinks.  This, HeaderTemplate2, was added to each report template just below HeaderTemplate1.  Note that both HeaderTemplate1 and HeaderTemplate2 were set as visible on each report template.
Also, on each report template I added a text element.  The 'List of Text Elements'property was set as such; Element Type = General Text Sympol,  Element ID = SYUSER.  This Text Element was linked to a query  or view from BEx via the dataprovider.  On the HTML side, I surrounded this Text Element with
<Font ID="UserID",,,textelement....</Font>
Each Report template has this javascript function, fnRepOnLoad, which is triggered at the OnLoad event.
[<SCRIPT language = "JAVASCRIPT">                       
  function fnRepOnLoad()
    var user_ID=document.getElementById("UserID").innerHTML;
    if (user_ID=='USER123')
      document.all["HEADTMPLT1"].style.visibility = 'hidden';
      document.all["HEADTMPLT1"].style.position = 'absolute';
    else         
      document.all["HEADTMPLT2"].style.visibility = 'hidden';
      document.all["HEADTMPLT2"].style.position = 'absolute';
</script>
The function results as this.  If the user is USER123, HeaderTemplate1 is hidden, leaving only HeaderTemplate2 visible.  Otherwise HeaderTemplate2 is invisible leaving on HeaderTemplate1 visible.
We do not use buttons as our global leaders prefer hyperlinks but buttons can be enabled or disabled similarly.
As mentioned before, if this method is implemented, I will create a reportable master data table.  Create a customer exit variable to retrieve the header template required for the user.  This header template variable value will then be pulled by a text element on each report template.  The script function will act as follows.  If many report headers are necessary I may use a case statement.
Var User_template=document.getElementById("UserTmplt").innerHTML;
If UserTmplt = HeaderTemplate1
-->  make all header templates other than HeaderTemplate1 invisible
else
-->  make all header templates other than HeaderTemplate2 invisible
etc...
I hope this helps.  Please keep me posted with your solution.  I am very interested to learn what others are doing.
Best Regards,
Larry