Lock down certain fields to allow access only to certain users

I have the same sort of issue
3 groups of people, User, Admin, Setup person
I resolved this by having the users having access to just the basic form
The specific Admin and Config pages can be hidden in the form Init script,
Then I have a button that after passing password, will display either the Admin page or the config page (2 different PW's)

Admin thus having acccess to the form and their required page
Setup person having access to all including the config page for pre-loading initial data
This works as long as you can separate the fields to specific pages

If the users need to see all, and if the specific data is on different pages, then you can use a script to flag the data fields on the specific pages as read only (or hiidden)

If the data is mixed on different pages, but you can name the data with a special prefix
ie: a201, a 202, g203, g... where A = admin and G = general, then the script may be able to differnentiate them and flag them accordingly as RO or even hidden.

The script I am talking about is in the tutorials and will loop through the entire form, or specific pages and flag fields as read only. I am sure U could change this and look for field names that start with a or g and change the presence to visible or hidden.

Paul G did a Tech talk on this awhile back.
http://www.acrobatusers.com/tech-talks
Tech Talk: Advanced Form Techniques with LiveCycle Designer
The locking fields is at the end of the presentation.


Not sure if this is what you are think about, also, I am new at this, so other solutions I am sure exist.

Do you want to do this based upon who opens the form or have a special button and password dialog?

Did the vendor give any hint on how to achieve this. I would look at the 'identity' object to identify the user and set a variable for access rights base upon that value. Within the form, the fields would be locked down by default, and a script would be run upon opening the form to determine if any of the fields should be unlocked.

I picture it that a user will open the document, and if they are this special employee, they will have a text box to type in a password, which will give them access to the protected fields. I don't imagine the fields would be hidden before they type in the password.

And I wasn't in on the meeting with the vendor so I'm not sure what he said, but essentially he said you could block out certain sections and make them only available to certain users. If it's too complex, I don't think it's worth it. I'd rather just create separate forms for different users..

It can be done by using an application folder level script to capture the or provide the properties of the 'identity' object and possibly assign a control value that can be used to show field as needed. I would look at using a function that could return a passed property of the identity object.