Determining the hierarchy of roles and users

All users of IMPAX are stored in a role hierarchy. You can configure preferences, licensing, permissions, and so on for a role, and all users that live in that role inherit those settings. Users can also have their own customized settings. For example:

Create a role called Clinicians in which all clinicians at the site live. You can define a set of preferences for the Clinicians role and all clinicians in the system inherit the same settings.
Create two roles for the radiology department, one called General Radiology and the other called Paediatric Radiology. Most radiologists belong to the General Radiology role, but those who specialize in paediatrics become users in the Paediatric Radiology role. You can then set up the general permissions, licensing, and preferences for each role so that radiologists can inherit them. But a few specific radiologists have special requirements for viewing and dictating studies. You can select those specific users and edit their settings. Then, their preferences combine both those from their role and the specific ones the you have defined for them at the user level.

Keep the following issues in mind when determining what type of role hierarchy to create when setting up your site so that you can configure IMPAX efficiently and minimize maintenance.

Default hierarchy

A default hierarchy of roles is shipped with IMPAX. This hierarchy provides a set of roles with default permissions and preferences. You can start your configuration of IMPAX using this default hierarchy and then modify it as required. For example, you could move the roles into different roles or tweak the permissions for a specific role.

Workflow

When relating workflow to creating a role hierarchy, consider the kind of workflow that exists at your site. For example, does the radiology department split workflow by paediatrics, breast imaging, and general radiology? Does your site have a specialty in neuro radiology? If so, you could define roles as follows:

Radiology
- General Radiology
- Paediatrics
- Breast Imaging
- Neuro Radiology
- Technologists

Does your site work in cross-functional teams? Consider setting up secondary roles for these cross-functional teams. Refer to Primary and secondary roles: Workflow applications.

Existing LDAP server

If you have an existing LDAP server in the IT department of your site, you can map the users and groups from that server into the users and roles in IMPAX.

While you should set up the role hierarchy to match the PACS needs, you may want to take into account the structure of the IT LDAP server when planning. Refer to Mapping from enterprise LDAP servers: Key concepts.

Licensing

Licensing occurs on a role basis. So the licenses that a user can access are inherited from all the roles the user belongs to. Refer to Licensing: Workflow applications.

Permissions

Permissions are inherited and merged, so the role hierarchy must take inheritance of permissions into account. For example, you do not want to accidentally give a set of clinicians the ability to dictate by placing a Clinicians role under a Radiology role. Refer to Permissions: Workflow applications.

Preferences

You can define preferences for a large group of users by editing a role. Then the users in that role inherit those preferences. (However, if a user already has modified preferences, changes made to the role do not affect that user. If you want a user with existing preferences to inherit those from the role, you can overwrite these custom preferences.)

You can also define preferences for a specific user. For example, if a radiologist wants Image area tools that are different from the standard for radiology, you can define this. Refer to Preferences: Key concepts.