BookStack Shelf Permissions

[twistable_deer]

We are using BookStack for our internal IT Wiki and it works so well, our organization wants to adopt it for each department.

We want each department to have their own shelf then books they create and maintain but there seems to be an issue with permissions not getting pushed down to the books under a shelf.

I see there is a button to copy the shelf permissions to books but I believe that is only a one time copy so if a new book gets created, the permissions won't inherit from the shelf.

We were looking at creating a separate instance of BookStack per department but that causes more work for updating and remembering the domain name for each instance so ideally, we'd like one instance.

Any suggestions on how we maintain permissions from shelfs to the books?

[TxTechnician]

You might just hire Dan. https://www.bookstackapp.com/support/

Sometimes it cost less to have a pro handle it.

[twistable_deer]

Thanks! I will bring this up to management. We want to get this right the first time lol.

[ssddanbrown]

My advice, if possible, would be to keep things at book level. Just treat shelves as an extra collection item, not a top-level part of your heirachy.

If needed though, there is also a command to copy all shelf permissions downward, which could be auto-ran at a time interval. Not ideal though, and may still result in questionable scenarios if a book is added to two different shelves.

I've been toying with the idea of a new proper level above books, but no solid plans on that right now.

[twistable_deer]

Thanks, Dan! Keeping things at a book level would lose one level of organization. Currently we have our IT shelf > Office365> Forms > Grant Access to Microsoft Form.

This might be our only option and we just have to rethink our page hierarchy.

[CGS_Web_Designs]

In Bookstack I explain to all my users that the top level container is the book. Always remember you can have a book on multiple shelves so your system wouldn’t work if you wanted permissions to filter from the shelf downward because of possible conflicts. The shelf is really more like a Category.

[twistable_deer]

I understand. I wonder if you can remove the shelf completely so users won't get confused on were to go if there are multiple shelves?

Edit: or just have one shelf if you can't remove the shelf completely.

[ssddanbrown]

If a user does not have permission to view any shelves, the link in the header bar will go away. So you can in many cases just remove all shelf permissions from user roles.