Indico best practices

Important

Indico is not only an event management tool, it is also a leading source of information.

Browsing through the various events listed on the site, it is easy to find information:

  • about users,

  • about their activities,

  • on the content of meetings.

Access rights management is essential.

The Terms of services are written in French and English and may change over time. The points covered concern access conditions, operation and content confidentiality…

Attention

“The user undertakes not to communicate his/her password to anyone and to respect the best practices in place at the CNRS (no easy-to-find passwords, no exchange of a personal account with another colleague, etc.). Users undertake to keep a local copy of their data. The user agrees not to upload viruses to the Indico IN2P3 platform or share infected files via Indico IN2P3.

Content protection management

Category administrator

Each category administrator has the responsibility to determine the appropriate access rights for the events included in the categories they manage.

They ensure that these rights are correctly assigned and applied when necessary.

Inheritance

Indico allows to set up a protection policy for almost all objects.

This protection policy is based on an inheritance system, which means that an object will inherit its parent protection. This is the default mode.

  • If the parent category (i.e., the highest level category) is public, by default the items (subcategories or events) it contains are public by inheritance ;

  • Similarly, if the protection of a parent category is changed (for example, from public to restricted), then all content inheriting the protections will undergo the same changes in access rights, unless that content has access protection that is not “inherited”.

Types of protection

In Indico, an object can be a category, an event, a session, a contribution, or material. You must assign a protection level to all these objects. The shield symbols indicate that an object protection setting is possible.

Three types of protection can be set up :

  • The change control list contains all users or groups who can edit and modify an object. Consequently, the people on this list will be the object managers and will be able to access all related pages, dependent objects, and attached objects ;

  • Access control configuration: by default, an object is inherited, but object managers can make it public or private and add restrictions ;

  • Domain control: it is possible to protect an Indico object so that it is only accessible to users connected from certain IP addresses.

Recommendations

  • Do not create a private event in a public tree structure. Newly created events inherit the protection settings of the category in which they are created, and there is a genuine risk of errors in protection settings. It is preferable to use a category that is already protected.

    Note

    It is still possible to change an event protection settings. A protected category can therefore contain public events (or viceversa).

  • Limit the number of managers to what is strictly necessary for a given category or event.

  • By default, a cloned event inherits the protections of the source event (and not those of the category). Particular attention must be paid to the protection defined for these clones.

  • Events with guests: For special events, with guests for example, it is convenient to restrict access rights to the event to its participants only. To do this, simply set up a registration form and authorize access to the event for those who have registered.

  • Sensitive events: For events with sensitive data, avoid access keys and opt for invitations to register for the event instead.

  • Project/team - Creation of groups of people: INDICO offers the possibility of creating “custom roles”. These are inherited by child events. They are intended to create groups of people to give them access to categories/events.