For sometime now, I’ve had an issue with a particular column in my user table. I have a form that an admin can use to add a user. For some reason, the value that is added to “role” (typically “user”) will initially appear in the table in the data editor. But after some time (sometimes as little as a few seconds, some times many minutes later) that value disappears.
I now see from the helpful “your topic is similar to…” feature that this is seemingly addressed here:
and is an expected behavior.
The link that Darren provides is dead now but the current version of the “roles” doc doesn’t indicate that a form cannot be used to set a user role unless the user has the same role. Is this still true?
If so, I’m very curious why? And is there a workaround other than the API…
Now that I’ve tested this further, I’m maybe even more confused about what the magic is of a text column that happens to have the name “role”. I created a second column called NotRole and wrote the value there as well and it sticks.
To the extent you are using “role” to define either visibility conditions or row ownership or both it seems like you can achieve 90% or more of the same functionality using a column not called “role” but using it in exactly the same fashion. Am I missing something?
When a column is assigned as a role column in your user profile configuration, you can only assign it if the user adding the row has the same role. Otherwise you need to use a server side workflow to assign it.
It has nothing to do with the the name of the column. A role column relies on actually assigning that column as a role column in the user profile configuration.
Also keep in mind that using a non role column as a role column does not provide the same data security as a role column with row owners. Using a pseudo role with a filter just hides data. It does not protect it.