Managing AEM Author Access

Author access to AEM sites is controlled via maillists. An author maillist is created and associated with each AEM site that is provisioned.

The Site Administrator is made the Owner of the site maillist and is responsible for managing them, including adding new authors to the author maillist to provide site access.

Please see the sections below for further information.

Site Maillists

Maillist types & functions

There are two types of maillists:

  1. author, e.g., cms-departmentname-authors and
  2. read-only, e.g., cms-departmentname-readonly

where "departmentname" is the department name. The two maillists serve different purposes and function by enabling specific user permissions.

When a new AEM site is provisioned, an author maillist is created and associated with it. However readonly maillists are only created on demand. If you need a readonly maillist, contact CMS help.

Author maillist

The author maillist provides access to the AEM authoring environment (author.sfu.ca), allowing users to create, edit, delete, and publish pages/tags/assets. By default, authors can also moderate comments and approve activation requests (see content approval).

Separate access can be applied for an area of your site (e.g., a sub-site), upon request. A separate mailing list will be created for this purpose. Site Admins can contact the CMS help queue for assistance. Do not attempt to create your own mailing list for access control.

Readonly maillist

The read-only maillist provides view only access to a AEM site, allowing users to view a site, but with no authoring capabilities. An example of using the readonly maillist would be to allow non-authors to preview a AEM site before its launch (e.g., a Chair/Dean or a department). If you require a readonly maillist, contact CMS help and request one.

Site administrator's role as maillist owner

The Site Administrator is automatically made the Owner (administrator) of the site maillists, and is responsible for managing the maillists.

Maillist Owners can:

  • add or remove members
  • change maillist options
  • designate a manager
  • delete the maillist.

Site maillists only contain the Site Administrator upon creation. The Site Administrator as Owner of the maillists is responsible for adding members to the maillists to provide the appropriate user permissions and access.

Login and visit www.maillist.sfu.ca for more information on maillists (click the Help button at top right).

Author Access

Only members of the author maillist will be able to author pages in AEM. The Site Administrator is automatically added as a member of the author maillist, but will need to add new authors as members of the maillist to provide site access. Authors can be added temporarily to maillists and removed, i.e. short-term projects, contracts.

Providing author access

To add new authors to an AEM site:

  1. Go to maillist.sfu.ca.
  2. In the Go to list field, enter the author maillist, then click Go. Most author maillists follow the cms-<your_site_name>-authors format. If you don't know your site name, look at the site URL. The name is the part that comes after "www.sfu.ca/". For example, the SFU News URL is www.sfu.ca/sfunews.html, which means its name is "sfunews".
  3. Click on the Maillist members tab.
  4. In "Add new members", enter the SFU email addresses of the authors to add, then click "Add."
  5. Click Save Changes.

Newly added authors to the maillist will be able to access the AEM site within 10 minutes of saving changes.

Removing author access

To remove author access from a AEM site:

  1. Go to maillist.sfu.ca.
  2. In the Go to list field, enter the author maillist, then click Go.
  3. Click the down arrow on Maillist members tab.
  4. Click on the trash can icon next to the member's email address to remove.
  5. Click Save Changes.

Maillist Management

CMS email updates

All author maillist members will receive email system updates from cms-info@sfu.ca.

Designating a maillist manager

A maillist Owner can designate a member as manager of the maillist to help administer the site or serve as a back-up to the site administrator. A maillist manager has the same permissions as a Owner (see above), but cannot delete the maillist.

  1. Go to maillist.sfu.ca.
  2. In the Go to list field, enter the author maillist, then click Go.
  3. Click the down arrow on Maillist members tab.
  4. In the Member Address column, find the author's name and email.
  5. Click the checkbox in the Manager column.
  6. Click the Save Changes button at bottom.

Note:  The chosen manager must be an existing member of the maillist. If they are not, add them as a member (see Providing author access above).

Transferring maillist ownership

The maillist Owner can transfer ownership of a maillist to a manager or member, i.e. when the Site Administrator changes or leaves the department. Transferring maillist ownership is a two-step process:

1) Offering maillist ownership, and
2) Accepting maillist ownership.

Offering maillist ownership

The maillist Owner will need to offer the maillist

  1. Go to maillist.sfu.ca.
  2. In the Go to list field, enter the author maillist, then click Go.
  3. Click the down arrow on Maillist Info tab.
  4. In the Owner field, click the Transfer button.
  5. In the New Owner Computing ID field, enter the transferee's SFU
    computing id.
  6. Click the Transfer button.

An email will be sent to the transferee, informing them that the maillist transfer has been initiated and instructing them on accepting/declining ownership.

Accepting maillist ownership

The transferee will need to accept ownership of the maillist to complete the transfer process:

  1. Go to maillist.sfu.ca.
  2. In the Go to list field, enter the author maillist, then click Go.
  3. Click the Click here to accept ownership of maillist(s) transferred to you link under the Go to list field.
  4. Click the Accept button to accept ownership of the list.