Advanced Access Management Simplified

Enhanced ZIMS Access Control for Animals (by Taxonomy or Individuals) and Enclosures.

Advanced Access Management (AAM) allows you to restrict User access to specified Animals, Taxonomies and Enclosures. This feature must first be enabled for your institution by Species360 Global Administrators. To request that this feature be enabled for your institution you should contact Species360 Support . But first, you must understand the effect that AAM will have on your ZIMS Users. This is a comprehensive access control system that can provide added difficulty to your daily workflow if it is enabled and deployed incorrectly.

Species360 Support is able to assist you with the basic aspects of enabling this feature- but due to the comprehensive nature of correctly deploying the AAM feature, intensive support is available via Consultative Training- which may include an added charge , depending on the assessment of your institutional needs.

Once AAM is turned on by the Species360 Administrator, your Local Admin will then need to activate the functionality. To activate go to Start > Institution > Institution Preferences > ZIMS Accessibility & Features.

Below, AAM has not yet been turned on for your facility by the Species360 Administrator.

Below, AAM has been turned on by the Species360 Administrator but has not yet been activated by your Local Admin:

Below, AAM has been activated by your Local Admin for Animals. Note that the three topics under Animals are not activated until Access Management for Animals is turned on. Hover over the “?” for a description of those functionalities. It has not been activated for Enclosures.

NOTE: Once AAM is enabled, when you run reports, not only does ZIMS have to apply all your filter criteria selected for the report, ZIMS also has to check every entity to see if you are allowed to see it. This means reports will run slower, in some cases noticeably slower, if you use AAM.

The only reports where AAM will apply filters are: Activity Report, Note Retrieval, Specimen, Taxon and Daily Reports. All other reports will not enforce AAM rules – you can limit access to these other reports by disabling them from the role for staff where data limitations should be enforced.

Once you have enabled AAM, to use it you assign access via your Departments ( Departments ). This means that everyone you want to give AAM access to must be recorded as a Department member. In addition your staff will need to have ZIMS Roles ( ZIMS Users with their current appropriate Roles )

To assign AAM access, open your Department grid within My Institution. Highlight the appropriate Department and select “Manage Department Scope” for the desired entity (Animal or Enclosure)”. Because only Animals was turned on, only Animal is available below. Then select Add New.

For Animals you can assign access by entire Taxonomies or by individual Animals. NOTE: We are recommending assigning Primary Access as Secondary and Read-only Access is going away soon. Primary Access grants all access permitted by the individual’s ZIMS Role.

NOTE: If AAM is turned on and rights are not set, global access rights will be provided by default.

Below we assigned access to all Carnivores and a single animal that was outside that taxonomy.

You can also assign rights to Departments from within an Animal record using the Privacy & Accessibility for Departments grid.

It is highly recommended that Local Admins assign access to Animalia for their Department.

We activated AAM for Enclosures so access to them can now be assigned. NOTE: Assignment by Enclosure means there is access to the Enclosure record, not access to the animals in that Enclosure.

You can assign multiple Enclosures at a time by using the Lookup and checking all that apply. By default, access to all sub-enclosures under the selected Enclosure will be given. Enclosures cannot be assigned from within the record.

As for Animals, it is highly recommended that Local Admin Departments be assigned the top level Enclosure.

By default, any Incomplete Accession (IA) created by a User with specified AAM rights will be assigned to all members of the Department of the IA creator.

Revised 5 March 2025