Originally published July 8, 1994
by Kathryn Cantrell
Last revised December 19, 2000
by David Wimberly
NSM-MS General
System Features
Desk Administration
Facilities of NSM-MS
This guide has been developed by Computing Services to aid departmental desk administrators in maintaining desks and desk assignments for their respective budgetary units. In addition to this guide, documentation for the application used to perform this function, the NSM-MS (Natural Secured Menus Maintenance System) functional specifications, are also available. NSM-MS documentation details all the functions for the setup and maintenance of online Natural applications based upon the Natural Secured Menus (NSM) architecture.
In September of 1993, the University implemented desk-based security for its online Natural applications based upon the proposal of March 17, 1993 and announced via campus memo. Prior to this date, user-based security was in effect. With user-based security, department heads requested that individuals working for them be given access to specific applications such as PSB (Personal Services and Budget System) and DART (Departmental Accounting, Reporting and Tracking system). The application owners responded to these requests by linking the user ID to the application and assigning to it certain security restrictions. Whenever an employee left and was replaced by another individual, user-based security required that the department notify the application owner and request that that user ID's access be terminated from the application (for every application to which the user had been granted access). The new employee would then have to be given access, via his user ID, to each application. Thus, with access defined in terms of user IDs, this transition of personnel and associated application access was very cumbersome and labor intensive.
With desk-based security, the individual is assigned to a desk ID and that desk ID is given access to Natural applications such as PSB and DART. Under this scheme, when personnel turnover occurs, it requires no action by the application owners, and with position based desk assignments (implemented in January 2001) no action by the department. This parallels exactly what happens in real life: a new person fills an old job with an existing office, phone, physical desk, and now a computerized desk complete with the authorization to perform online administrative functions.
Furthermore, with the advent of the University's BASIS (Business and Administrative Strategic Information System) applications, the number of users and the number of online Natural systems has increased significantly. Also, the electronic routing and approval system, TARGET, was developed and is used by BASIS applications. This system requires thousands of transaction routing definitions that must be defined and maintained. If these definitions were based upon user IDs, the amount of maintenance to keep up with employee turnover would be unmanageable. However, since the TARGET definitions are based on desks, when turnover occurs the desk is automatically linked to the new employee and the appropriate TARGET routing definitions remain in affect.
NSM-MS is the online Natural application that provides maintenance facilities for online Natural applications using the Natural Secured Menus (NSM) architecture. The NSM architecture is a set of standards under which online applications operate. These standards mean that NSM applications provide a common user interface, i.e. all applications look and operate similarly. Also, NSM provides a method for performing security administration in a distributed manner. Users responsible for the applications, application owners, perform the access and security maintenance functions through NSM-MS. Desk administrators use NSM-MS to define desks for their budgetary units and assign those desks to employees. In addition, Computing Services personnel setup Natural applications and their menus using NSM-MS.
The following sections describe features and facilities of the NSM Maintenance System which apply to the entire application or are common to all functions.
Desk Administration is performed by using the NSM-MS application. There are two maintenance functions, Desk maintenance (D) and Desk Assignment maintenance (DA), that you will use. There are also a number of list functions that will aid you by summarizing data and displaying additional information you may need. The Desk Administrator's Menu figure is an example of the NSM-MS menu for desk administrators, or view an actual image of the desk administrator's menu in a separate window.
Figure: Desk
Administrator's Menu
Enter, mark or position cursor to desired command
NSOMENU 1 TEST Desk Administrator's Menu - DAM 12/18/00 10:59
Command: Action: V Desk: Appl: Cmd Sec Grp:
Val Sec Grp: Parm:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CMD Command description Required key fields
---- ---------------------------------------- ------------------------------
_ D Desk Desk
_ DA Desk Assignment Assignment Type, ID & Time
_ LDB List Desk for a Budgetary Unit Budgetary Unit & Desk
_ LUD List Users (desk assignments) for a Desk Desk & Time
_ LAD List Applications for a Desk Desk & Appl
_ LHDA List Historical Desk Assignments Assignment TYpe, ID & Time
_ LPBD List Positions for a BU and Date Budgetary Unit, Occ Cd & Date
_ LUU List User IDs for a User User
Enter-PF1---PF2---PF3---PF4---PF5---PF6---PF7---PF8---PF9---PF10--PF11--PF12---
Help Quit
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Desk maintenance, D, is used to define new desks, modify the budgetary units, names, and descriptions of existing desks, and delete desks in your budgetary unit(s). Desk Assignment maintenance, DA, is used to specifically assign the desks previously defined for your budgetary unit to positions or users in your budgetary unit. There are also list functions available in NSM-MS that can help desk administrators perform their duties by providing additional information. The following section describes these functions in more detail.
If you have a new employee and there is not a desk available or one that fits his job responsibilities, you need to add a new desk. To do that, use the command D, Desk Maintenance, and the action of A, Add, and the new desk ID for your new employee, associating it with the same budgetary unit as assigned to the employee. See the section on Desk maintenance for further details. The next step is to assign the desk to the appointed employee's position or the employee's User ID.
When an employee is appointed and you want to make an assignment for his active User ID (the most common situation), you will be making a position type assignment (type P) for the employee's PSB position number. LPBD will display the appointed positions for a BU, or LUU will display the position an employee is assigned based upon the user ID -- either one can be used to locate the position number. When an employee is hourly or you are dealing with a temporary ID of an appointed employee, you must assign a desk directly to the User ID (assignment type U).
If you do not know what desk should be assigned to this user, assess his application access and TARGET review responsibility needs. If he is replacing someone who just left a position, no new assignment is required since the new employee will fill the old position and be assigned the same desk as the former employee. If this is a new position or a new job that has been created, use the list functions to see if there is already a desk defined for his budgetary unit that fits his needs. LDB, List Desks for a Budgetary Unit, will show you if a desk has any application access, if it is a TARGET reviewer, if it is an application owner, and if it is assigned to at least one user. LAD, List Applications for a Desk, will show you the applications that a desk has been granted access, along with the security restrictions placed on that access. If you need to know further information about the desk's TARGET review responsibilities, you may contact the TARGET administrator ("Find out who's an application owner" will tell you how to determine the owner of the TARGET Maintenance System (the application ID is TARGET) and that person is the TARGET administrator).
Once you have determined the desk to be assigned to the user, use the command DA, Desk Assignment Maintenance, with an action of A, Add, the appropriate type of P or U, the Desk Assignment ID of the position number or the user ID, and a future date/time (even 5 minutes is okay, but this cannot be effective for a past point in time). If an assignment previously existed for the position or user, the action will need to be U, Update. See the section on Desk Assignment maintenance for further information.
If an appointed employee leaves your department and the appropriate PSB change has been made (termination or position change), no update regarding desk assignments is required since the system makes this assignment based upon the employee's appointed position. Similarly, if an hourly employee leaves and the Hourly wage rate has been inactivated, no change in desk assignments is required because the system will not grant access to the user assigned desk without the employee having an active wage rate in the same BU.
However, you may wish to remove a position or user type assignment when it is no longer needed or is no longer appropriate for the employee to have access to a desk. To do this, you use DA, Desk Assignment Maintenance. Similar to the process you go through when you assign a desk, you Update the assignment specifying a future date/time. But instead of typing in the ID of the desk, you remove the specific desk by blanking out the Desk ID field. This desk removal will be done automatically by a monthly batch program for user type assignments in the following situations.
If you want to delete a desk, it must not:
If you need to know the owner(s) of a Natural application, you can try to sign on to that application. If you do not have access to it, a window is displayed that identifies an owner's name to contact if you desire application access. Another method is to use the NSM-MS function Application maintenance, A. The first screen shows the desks that have been set up as owners. If you do not know who is assigned to an owner desk, use LUD, List Users of a Desk.
If you are the designated person to request changes in application access and/or TARGET transaction routing definitions, you should contact the individual application owners for changes in access and the TARGET administrator (the owner of the TARGET application) for changes in transaction routing definitions.
Computing Services runs a monthly batch update program that validates that the user IDs are active on the University's Payroll system. If a user ID's SSN is not an active employee via either an appointed PSB position or an active hourly wage rate, the user ID status is set to inactive and any user type desk assignment is removed. Further, if a user type desk assignment exist and the BU associated with the desk does not match the employee's current employment the desk assignment is also removed. This update program is run after the monthly appointed payroll run.
Most individuals will only require one desk. However, a position may be assigned a second desk on an interim basis. For example, when an employee in your department terminates, usually another employee in your department takes on the job responsibilities of the terminated employee until a replacement is hired. This employee is performing these job duties on an interim basis in addition to his regular duties. Therefore he should be assigned the desk of the terminated employee. At the time a replacement is hired, this interim desk assignment should be removed. This is the reason two desk assignments may be made on DA, Desk Assignment maintenance, for position type assignments. (Interim desks are not permitted for hourly employees or temporary user IDs.)