The Alfresco membership and security model

A content management system requires a membership system that allows its users to access content, set their preferences, and receive notifications and alerts. Members of the system can collaborate with other members by selectively sharing documents and sharing ideas by using discussion forums. Through workflow, members can control and follow the business process.

Traditional membership models address basic authentication (who can access) and authorization (what they can do). Alfresco extends this model by providing capabilities to manage groups and subgroups of members, member attributes, and member workspaces. It also provides a set of administrative tools to configure and control the membership.

Users and groups

Users are individual members, whereas groups are logical categorizations of users.

In Alfresco, a user is identified by a unique user ID, which is also known as the login ID. The administrator is like a superuser of the system. Alfresco...