MusicMaster Blog

By Vicky James

Not long ago I had a client call me after noticing his coding within an entire field of the database was M-I-A… Missing. Gone!

After sharing the devastation of the missing coding that he’d worked on for so long, most importantly, that coding would affect majority of his rules in place. Luckily, he had a recent backup from the Friday before and a simple restore fixed the problem. However, my client was still puzzled by who accidentally cleared that field. I then asked him if he was aware of the Dataset Security feature. He wasn’t, so I led him straight to it. We enabled security and set up user log in and assigned rights. Here’s how we did it….

Select Tools. Options. Dataset Security. It will prompt you that the security system is disabled in red as it is here, so go ahead and click Enable Security.

Once the security is enabled it will turn green and a prompt will appear reminding you to set up your users and rights along with adding a password for the Administrator. I strongly advise you to do so and save your password in a safe place, or make it something you remember, as the next time you access your database you will need that password.

Click Ok. Select Users and Rights. Create User.

As seen below you will start by assigning the Username and Password as I have done for the Music Director.

Next, you will need to select the rights that will be granted to each user for the following features. Keep in mind that you can also select Administrator, which will grant the user those same admin rights. However, it doesn’t give that user access to the current users’ passwords, but it does allow them to create new users and passwords.

Another option is ALL which is obvious; if selected, that user has access to everything listed.

Notice an option to Copy which allows you to copy selections from one user to the next user created. Once the next user is created, it will disable paste so that you can grant this user the same rights as the previous user.

Below is the full list expanded for each section. In this example, I chose not to select all rights for the Music Director, but specifically what I believe he or she will need to access to work as efficiently as possible.

Be sure to review the list after you’ve made your selections. Once you’ve created the users, click Apply.

Now let’s give it a test run!

Go to File. Close Dataset. Then Open Dataset

You will now be prompted to Log In. Enter your Username and Password.

Voila! Your database is now officially secure!

Now, go back to Tools > Options > Dataset Security

Displayed will be the System Entry Log for WHO accessed the database and when.

Now, if you see any unexpected changes in your database and want to know who was responsible, you can go here to see who was recently logged in before you!

I hope you enjoy reading about the Dataset Security feature as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you. If you have any further questions about securing your database or need further help, don’t hesitate to reach out to your favorite music scheduling software support team, or directly to your dedicated Music Scheduling Consultant!

Ta-ta til my next blog… Vicky

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