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Featuring: Community Captain Björn Reuber, Product Support Tech Lead, Board

In my 15 years as a Board support tech lead, one of the most misunderstood features I’ve experienced is the ‘Run as administrator’ option for selections. Many people mistakenly believe that it will apply only to the entities mentioned in the step, rather than to everything. I’ve seen numerous implementations based on this incorrect understanding of what is, in fact, a pretty simple feature. Let’s explore together.

If we consider the selection sequence at runtime (learn more), we can simplify this in two different areas—the security selections and the ‘runtime’ selections. Now we can consider that the ‘Run as administrator’ option is just skipping the first part, so only the runtime selections were kept. So, depending on the selection made during runtime, we might get a different result.

Let's consider we have 10 Cost Centers: Cst_Ctr_1 … Cst_Ctr_10, Department (IT, Finance, HR, Services, Production), Country (US, DE, IT, FR, ES).

A user has a security selection on 3 Cost Centers (1-3) and 2 Departments (IT, Finance). Furthermore, I use some tech cubes to visualize the “real” selection and check those with an Administrative Account without selection.

Scenario 1)

User selects Cost Center Cst_Ctr_1, Cst_Ctr2 Department IT and Countries US, DE.

Reset selection on Entity (with run as administrator) leads to following result:

• Country: active selection Cost Center Cst_Ctr_1, Cst_Ctr2, Department IT.

• Cost Center: active selection ALL Cost Center (1-10), Department IT and Countries US, DE.

Scenario 2)

User selects no Cost Center, Department IT and Countries US, DE.

Reset selection on Entity (with run as administrator) leads to following result:

• Country: active selection ALL Cost Center (1-10), Department IT.

• Cost Center: active selection ALL Cost Center (1-10), Department IT and Countries US, DE.

The reason for the different behavior is that we have the security selection AND a user based selection (which is reducing the amount of cost centers).

We also need to consider that the ‘Run as administrator’ feature is only working UNTIL the next selection step (independent on the nature of the select action) OR the next user interaction. Please keep in mind that the Debugger is always considered as a user interaction.

So, if we had a Reset Selection on Cost Center with “Run as administrator” and, after this, a selection step on Year without “Run as administrator”, the security would be introduced again.

Summary:

• “Run as administrator” is always skipping the full security selection (not only a part of it).
• Selection can be done in security and user space at the same time, so this needs to be considered during procedure design.
• Security is re-introduced with the next user interaction OR selection without "Run as administrator."

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Thank you, Björn, for sharing your insights as a Community Captain!

Questions? Let us know in the comments section.

The Board Academy has been really helpful with clear, easy-to-follow content. The certification covers the specifics of board governance well, and I keep learning new things even after going through it a few times. Big thanks to the team behind it! By the way, when's the next certification coming out? I’m ready for it hehe

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