Organizational Charting System with Delegated Access Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
Large organizational structures face challenges in understanding and managing complex hierarchical relationships, with existing methods being time-consuming, costly, and insecure, particularly when it comes to generating and modifying organizational charts.
Innovation Solution
An organizational charting system with a dedicated security model that allows flexible access control and delegation of permissions, enabling efficient creation, management, and modification of organizational charts, reducing overhead for administrators and users while ensuring security and accuracy.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If a graphical organizational chart is used to present interconnected organizational structure, then visual understanding of relationships is improved, but complexity and difficulty to understand increases when entity is very large
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the organizational chart into multiple views or levels of detail. Users can navigate between different segments of the organization, viewing detailed charts for specific departments while maintaining an overview of the entire organization. This segmentation allows large organizational structures to be managed in manageable portions, reducing the perceived complexity while maintaining visual understanding.
2Loss of information
If organizational chart is made fully representative of large entity, then completeness of information is improved, but time and cost to generate and modify increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements automated generation of organizational charts by integrating with existing HR systems and data sources. The system automatically updates the organizational chart when organizational changes occur, eliminating manual creation and modification efforts. This self-service approach maintains complete and accurate organizational information while significantly reducing the time and cost required to generate and update charts.
3Productivity
If individual users are allowed to generate and modify organizational charts, then time and cost efficiency is improved, but security concerns increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements role-based access control where different users have different levels of permissions tailored to their specific needs. For example, HR personnel may have full access to modify the entire organizational chart, while department managers can only modify their own departments. This local quality approach allows individual users to efficiently generate and modify relevant portions of the organizational chart while maintaining security and accuracy through appropriate access restrictions.
4Reliability
If security model is implemented to control access to organizational charts, then accuracy and confidentiality are improved, but overhead for administrators and users increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates security control mechanisms directly into the existing organizational chart management system, making the security model a built-in feature rather than a separate layer. The same interface and workflows used for creating and modifying organizational charts also handle security permissions and access control. This universality approach ensures accuracy and confidentiality through proper security measures while minimizing overhead by avoiding separate security management processes.
Data Source
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AI summary
Techniques to manage access to organization information for an entity are described. An apparatus may include a presentation component operative to present an organizational chart on a presentation surface. The organizational chart may comprise multiple nodes associated with members of an organization, and connections between the nodes representing hierarchical relationships between the nodes. A security component may be communicatively coupled to the presentation component. The security component may be operative to receive a request to modify a characteristic of the organizational chart from an operator, access security settings for the operator, and authorize the operator to modify a characteristic of the organizational chart. Authorization may be granted, for example, when the operator is a delegate and a permission level for the delegate allows a modification operation associated with the modify request. Other embodiments are described and claimed.