Providing Permission to PeopleSoft components by updating PeopleTools tables

1. How to provide Permission to PeopleSoft components by updating tables in back end(database)?
2. How to add component permission to a permission lists in PeopleSoft through database?
3. What are the PeopleTools tables to be updated when providing permission to PeopleSoft components through back end?
4. Though permission lists reflect the name of the PeopleSoft component; why the security tab of the component in 'PeopleTools > Portal > Structure and Content' does not show the Permission lists updated via back end?

There could be chances that we will have to provide permission to a number of PeopleSoft components across several PeopleSoft Permission lists. Doing this via online, could be painful and time consuming as we have to open each and every Permission list, insert the menu, provide permission to the required page/component with desired actions. An alternate way is to update PSAUTHITEM table which stores information on the PeopleSoft authorized menu items. The structure of PSAUTHITEM is below:

Field Name	Description
CLASSID	The name of the class(permission list)
MENUNAME	Menu Name
BARNAME	Menu Bar Name
BARITEMNAME	Bar Item Name
PNLITEMNAME	Panel Item Name
DISPLAYONLY	Display Only
AUTHORIZEDACTIONS	Authorized Actions for Panels

Here is the link to one of my previous posts related to PSAUTHITEM - on finding Finding BARNAME, ITEMNAME and all about PSAUTHITEM table.  We can achieve our desired result by inserting/updating the PSAUTHITEM table with the required permission list, menu name, menu bar name, panel item name and specifying if the page is Display only along with the authorized actions to be allowed for that page.

MENUNAME:
Menu Name under which the component is registered and requires permission.

MENUBARNAME:
Menu bar name

BARITEMNAME:
Itemname used in the menu definition for the panel group(component).


PNLITEMNAME:
The itemname used for the panel(page) in the component definition.

DISPLAYONLY:
The value for  field has to be either 1 or 0 depending upon how we require the page to be displayed.

AUTHORIZEDACTIONS:
This field takes numeral values and below are the primary four values allowed:

• 1: Add
• 2: Update Display
• 3: Add/Update/Display
• 4: Update/Display All

If the page requires one or more of these actions to be allowed, then the above values should be summed up and stored in this table. Below is the list of the combo actions along with their numeric values.

• 5: Add/Update/Display All
• 6: Update/Display/Update/Display All
• 7: Add/Update/Display/Update/Display All
• 8: Correction
• 9: Add/Correction
• 10: Update/Display / Correction
• 11: Add/Update/Display/Correction
• 12: Update/Display All/Correction
• 13: Add/Update/Display All/Correction
• 14: Update/Display/Update/Display All/Correction
• 15: Add/Update/Display/Update/Display All/Correction
• 128: Data Entry

So, as required we can either insert or update the permission lists in PSAUTHITEM table to provide permission to components(adding components to permission lists and granting access). However extreme care is required while updating PSAUTHITEM table to avoid creating problems for existing content references. While what we have seen so far answers the first three questions in this post, still the last one remains unanswered.

How do we ensure that the portal object security is correctly synchronized? 
When we do grant permissions to a component either via Application Designer or through Online (PeopleTools > Portal > Structure and Content) there are lots of changes that PeopleSoft does and merely updating PSAUTHITEM does not do all that.

The hierarchical relationships and dependencies between objects in the portal registry determine what security settings each object must have. The portal won't work correctly if these security relationships are not maintained properly. Running the Portal Security Sync - PORTAL_CSS application engine in the navigation PeopleTools > Portal > Portal Security Sync will synchronize the Portal Security.

After running the Portal Security Sync, security definitions gets synchronized and now the permission lists inserted/updated in PSAUTHITEM table will reflect in the Security tab of every related content reference. And that's it.

But before this post concludes, let us understand what Portal Security Sync process does.