[Phpgroupware-developers] addressmaster vs no addressmaster

[Brian Johnson]

I would like to start discussion about the new addressbook integration with the
phpgw accounts system and specifically the concept of an addressmaster account.

The purpose of this logic (the way I understand it) is to have an account 
created on
your system (called addressmaster) and have that account own all of the 
addressbook
records that are linked to accounts in order to control who can edit that info. 
 Of
course, the acl system would allow the admin to provide edit access to other 
groups
and users on the system so that other could edit the info as well.  I understand
that ceb is working on some code so that the addressmaster account is optional 
and
that function can be assigned to any one (or multiple) user or group.

I would like to allow each of my users to edit their own information and not 
only
have read access to the information of the other account holders.  The current
proposed system does not provide for this.  I could provide edit access to the
contact information (linked to the accounts) to the account holders but then 
they
would have edit permission to the contact information of ALL of the account 
holders.

The reason I want to set my system up like this is simple, I'm lazy.  It saves 
me
from having to do it (also I claim I've got better things to do than continually
update people's addresses when they decide to move).

Don't think of keeping the information current on a per account holder basis, 
think
of you, as admin, doing the updating the contact information of 100 people or 
1000
people.  Also consider the volume of information that you would be responsible 
to
keep current, possibly without any formal notice of information change: business
addresses for department changes, title changes, home addresses, cell phone 
numbers,
email addresses, instant messaging.

I think you can appreciate why I don't want to be responsible for keeping it 
current.

So here is what I propose for discussion:
provide a system config option to use the addressmaster concept OR have the 
account
own the contact record linked to that account (and bypass all of the 
addressmaster code)

I don't think the addressmaster concept can be modified easily to accomodate 
what I
want (and what I think many others will want).

The admin can use the existing acl system to provide read only access (or even 
edit
access) to the contact info owned by any single account (or admin by account 
group)

There only needs to be a way added to prevent these records from being deleted 
while
the account exists.

We already have the answer for that too.

The new addressbook calls a addressbook_delete hook for any apps to prevent the
deletiong of a record (created so that other apps can use the addressbook as a
contact store without fearing that the info will be deleted by an unsuspecting 
user)

With this option, addressbook (or phpgwapi) can have a hook that checks to see 
if
the contact record is linked to from an account (phpgw_accounts is the table 
that
stores which contact records is linked to that account), and prevent it's 
deletion.

Even if the owner of the record tries to delete it, it is protected from 
deletion.

So coding for this entire option may be as simple as creating a config option,
wrapping the addressmaster code in some if() statements to only run if that 
option
is selected, and a delete_addressbook hook.  Sounds very simple.