Configuring MERCI's Permissions for Your Workflow

Defining permissions for your MERCI implementation is an important step in getting your online equipment reservation system up and running. To begin, you will need to create Roles in the Drupal interface. Consider Drupal Roles for your MERCI configuration the same as certifications at your organization (i.e., studio certification, field certification and editing certification).

Creating Roles in Drupal 6
Creating Roles in Drupal 7

After creating Roles, you will need to give each role access to specific type of equipment. These permission are based on the Content Types you previously created.

To define the access permissions for each role, if you have enabled merci_permission module navigate to Administer > Site Configuration > MERCI > MERCI Permissions. Once on the MERCI Permissions pages, check the appropriate box in the grid to provide access for user to create reservations for the items listed.

If you are not using the merci_permission module or are looking at the core permission configuration, roles are granted access to associate a node from a content type to a Reservation node when they are in a Role with Edit Own and Delete Own permissions for that content type.

Permissions in Drupal 6
Permissions in Drupal 7

MERCI Specific Permissions:
create reservations - This is the most basic permission level. This alone is not enough to reserve equipment. Without Adding Edit Own and Delete Own permissions to specific content types, users will see empty select lists of the equipment available to them.

create confirmed reservations - This permission allows users to create/edit reservations with any status (unconfirmed, confirmed, checked-out, checked-in, etc.) However, it doesn't allow the user to change the status.

create reservations outside hours of operation - Does what it says. Allows users to create reservations with start and end times outside of the hours of operation.

override max hours over closed days - For example. If you normally only allow an item to be checked for at the most 24 hours but you are closed on Sunday. Then with this setting users can have reserve the item from Saturday through Monday.

edit own item_type and delete own item_type - These are the two permissions required in addition to the create reservations permission which allow users to reserve the item of the specified type.

suspend MERCI access - This permission blocks users from creating new reservations or altering existing reservations. It is really a negative permission and was added for sites using modules like CiviCRM Role or Member Sync to keep users synchronized between CiviCRM and Drupal. Rather than try to remove users CiviCRM is trying to add to a role based on certification and membership status to suspend them from MERCI, adding this permission prevents users from being able to use MERCI until they are removed from the Role with this permission.

view all reservations - Allows anonymous users to view reservations. By default only authenticated users can view reservations.

manage reservations (formerly manage MERCI) - This permission grants users access to check equipment in and out and edit all existing reservations. Manage MERCI allows users to:

• Alter the status of a Reservation to Checked Out, Checked In, Canceled, and No Show
• Assign item from Bucket to Reservation
• Add Accessories to a Reservation

To access the Manage Equipment admin menu, users in a Role with manage MERCI permissions must also have access administration pages. This will only grant the user access to areas withing admin/ they have permissions to. MERCI's management interfaces are within admin/ to take advantage of an admin_theme.

administer MERCI - This permission grants user permission to adjusting settings content type level settings. Also allows editing the sitewide MERCI settings at admin/settings/merci

The following table shows the various settings used in MERCI and the permissions required to alter the settings.