CATSWeb Administrators have a variety of means of controlling proxy signatures. The first means is via two permissions present in each Employee and Personality record: Sign for Department Members and Sign for Anyone. CATSWeb users must have one or both of these permissions granted in order to apply a proxy signature. These permissions govern who they can sign for. Proxy signatures can be disabled throughout the system by denying these permissions to all users (easily done via making the appropriate settings in all Personalities).

Each CATSWeb Employee can have optional Proxy Signature Permissions set for them. These optional permissions control who can sign for them. Proxy Signature Permissions can be set based on Group, Department, Personality, or Employee Name. If one or more proxy signature permissions are set for a particular Employee, users attempting to sign for this Employee must meet at least one of the criteria defined. For example, if Employee Bob Jones has proxy signature permissions set for the CATSWeb Personality "Administrator" and for the CATSWeb Department "Assembly", proxy signatures will only be accepted for Bob Jones if they are from users with the "Administrator" Personality, or are currently in the "Assembly" Department. Proxy signature attempts from users who don't meet either of these criteria will be rejected, regardless of what their own Sign for Department Members and Sign for Anyone permissions are set to.

The CATSWeb Database Properties page has contains two system settings which apply to proxy signatures. The Proxy Signature Mode determines if proxy signatures are accepted for users that have no Proxy Signature Permissions set for them. If set to "Permissive", proxy signatures are accepted. If set to "Restrictive", proxy signatures are denied. The setting has no impact on users that do have Proxy Signature Permissions set on their Employee record.

When a user adds a proxy signature, CATSWeb automatically appends a comment to whatever other comments the user has entered on the Add Signature page. The comment states that the signature is a proxy signature for the specified user. The Proxy Signature Comment setting determines if additional information is included with the appended comment. If set to "Basic", no additional information is included. If set to "Extended", a list of the Proxy Signature Permissions that were met by the user applying the signature is included.

Management Strategies

Various strategies may be chosen to effectively manage proxy signatures, depending on your requirements. Some suggested strategies are listed below, in increasing order of administrative time required.

• Disable Proxy Signatures - As stated above, proxy signatures can be disabled throughout the system by revoking the Sign for Department Members and Sign for Anyone permissions from all Employee records. This is easily accomplished via Personalities.
  
  
• Permissive Strategy - Setting Proxy Signature Mode (Database Properties page) to "Permissive" allows the Employee/Personality Sign for Department Members and Sign for Anyone permissions to fully control the feature. Proxy Signature Permissions are not required and need only be defined for exceptional cases where a particular user wishes to carefully restrict who can sign on their behalf.
  
  
• Restrictive Strategy - Setting Proxy Signature Mode (Database Properties page) to "Restrictive" results in the most administrative time needed to manage the feature. Each user that wishes to accept proxy signatures will need Proxy Signature Permissions defined with their Employee record. In a system with many users, this could become a time-consuming task.