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Getting started with partitions and areas

One of the important system design features in Security Center is the ability to group entities, such as cameras, into separate security and organizational sets. We use partitions to group entities based on their security access, and areas for entity organization in the Logical View and Selector Pane.

Partitions are used to specify which users and user groups have the ability to view a specific group of entities. The entities that are controlled by the partition are called partition members, and the users who are allowed to see those entities are called accepted users. An accepted user can also be a partition manager, which gives them administrative control over that partition. User privileges specify what the user can do with the entities and which applications they can access. We can have separate privilege sets for each partition, as well as a set of basic privileges. Partitions can be used to create multiple independent sub-systems contained in one Security Center system.

Whereas partitions are used to determine if a user can see an entity, areas are used to organize the entities into common groups for ease of use. Areas can group entities based on physical location or some other logical grouping method. They can also be used to set up specific access control functions, such as antipassback and interlocking.

When configuring a new system, the first step should be to create the partitions that are needed to organize the system according to the security divisions. After creating the users, video entities, and access control entities, we can then create our areas to make the entities easy to find in the client applications. Both partitions and areas can be nested for greater flexibility.

For example, if we want a set of users to be able to access a group of cameras covering various floors at a head office, we would put those cameras into a "Head Office Cameras" partition, and the users would be added to the accepted users list. If we want to be able to quickly see which entities are in a particular location, such as the parking lot, we could group those entities as members of the "Parking Lot" area, which can be a sub-area of the general "Head Office" area.

For more information on the configuration of partitions and areas, please check out the GTAC Tech Talk webinar on this subject. (Requires login)