Professional SharePoint® 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building Publishing Sites with Office SharePoint Server 2007

15.1. SharePoint Security Components

SharePoint deals with authorization using various interconnected components. The components enable site administrators and owners to specify what things users can see and do, to group these various rights into named sets, and to apply these named sets within the context of a securable object.

15.1.1. Permission Rights

At the very core of SharePoint authorization is permission rights. The various permissions are broken down into three categories: list permissions, site permissions, and personal permissions. List permissions are those things that apply to SharePoint lists, such as customizing the list's schema, content types, workflow settings, and versioning, among other things. Site permissions are those things that apply to SharePoint sites, such as creating subsites, managing permissions and creating new groups, connecting to sites using something other than the browser interface, such as SharePoint Designer, as well as customizing the pages within a site. Personal permissions include the capability to manage personal views and customize personalized pages with Web Parts.

All the individual permission rights can be viewed on the page where permission levels are created or customized. This is available from a site's Site Settings page by selecting Advanced Permissions Settings Permission Levels, from which you can either select an existing ...