Managing who can do what in dotCMS now has three new screens: Roles, Tools and Users. They are part of our wider effort to rebuild every admin screen on one modern foundation, so they look, search and behave like the rest of the redesigned admin.
Roles and tools used to be grouped together in a single Roles & Tools screen, with users in a screen of their own. Now each job has its own home:
Roles decides who gets access.
Tools defines what is in the navigation.
Users manages the people.
You will find all three under Settings. They are marked Beta today, and that label is coming off soon. The original screens stay available, and will be marked Legacy.
Roles: who gets access
The left panel shows your role hierarchy, with a user count on each role and a filter to find one fast. Select a role and its header shows how many users it has and how many tool groups it has been granted.
Create a role with New. Give it a name, choose where it sits in the hierarchy, and decide what can be managed for it. A role placed under a parent inherits that parent's users and tool groups.
Grant tool groups on the role's Tools tab. Every tool group is a row, with the tools inside it listed beside it. Check a row and the change is saved right away.
See where access comes from. The Granted From column shows whether a grant belongs to the role itself or is inherited from a parent role.
Manage members on the Users tab, where you can add a user to the role directly.
Tools: what is in the navigation
Tools is where you shape the left-hand navigation itself. On the left are the sections that make up the menu, each with its icon. Select a section to see its tools; on the right is every available tool.
Create a section with New Section: name it and pick an icon.
Add tools by searching the list and checking what belongs. Each tool appears under the section right away.
Set the order by dragging, for whole sections and for the tools inside them. Remove a tool from a section with its small x.
Create a custom content tool with New Tool.
Changes save as you make them, so there is no Save button to forget.
Tools defines the sections, and granting them stays in Roles. A new section shows up on every role's Tools tab, ready to check.
Users: the people
Users is one searchable table showing each person's name, email, roles, access (administrator, back-end, front-end) and last login. Search by ID, name or email, filter the list, sort the columns, and select several people to act on them together, for example adding them to a bundle.
Click New and everything about a user lives in one dialog, organized in tabs. Enter the name and email, let dotCMS generate a secure password, and use the Active switch to control whether the person can sign in. On the Roles tab, move roles from Available to Granted; dotCMS adds the Back-end User role automatically. Open that role in Roles and you will see the person on its Users tab.
That is the flow: Roles for who gets access, Tools for what is in the menu, and Users for the people, all with the same modern look and behavior as the rest of the redesigned admin.