Access and permissions

• Everyone who can use EA Sphere on your site can view the map and records, maintain records, record degradations and reference systems from Jira work items.
• Settings, replacing all data and deleting all data are restricted to Jira administrators and verified on the server.
• Notices to restricted audiences can be recorded only by members of the Jira groups permitted for those audiences under Settings, Degradation. Recorded notices and degradation updates cannot be changed, and EA Sphere records who made each one and when. They are removed only with their degradation, and only a Jira administrator can delete a degradation that has notices recorded, or a record any of whose degradations has notices recorded. When a person who is not a Jira administrator deletes a degradation or a tabletop exercise at the moment someone else records a notice on it or starts it, EA Sphere takes the two in turn: if the notice or start comes first, the delete is refused and nothing is removed, because only Jira administrators can delete a degradation with notices recorded or an exercise that has started; if the delete comes first, EA Sphere tells the person recording the notice or starting the exercise that it was deleted by someone else and closes the dialog.
• Jira work item details in EA Sphere come from Jira, not from the browser. A Jira work item can be referenced only by someone who can see it in Jira. A person who cannot see a referenced work item sees it as a restricted work item, listed among open or done work items without its key, summary, Jira status or due date, and cannot change which Jira work item the reference points to or which systems it touches, except that deleting a record removes the references to it from every work item. When Jira is limiting requests, work item details it has not confirmed within about seven seconds are withheld in the same way until the page next loads. Anyone who can use EA Sphere can remove a work item from EA Sphere, including one they cannot see in Jira; a Jira work item itself is not changed.
• Removing a work item from EA Sphere, whether it is a Jira work item or one kept only in EA Sphere, writes a Reference removed line for every reference it held, including one a colleague added that the page had not yet shown, once the removal stands; lines storage does not take at once are added shortly afterwards, and none is written twice: a removal sent again after part of it failed writes one Reference removed line per record, naming the work item. A removal counts as finished only once its last history lines are written, so a colleague's history line written meanwhile stands. When someone removes a work item they cannot see in Jira, the planned retirement date and awaiting-delivery mark of the records it referenced stay as they are; the weekly maintenance, which counts every work item, works them out again; so does Jira's next update event for another open work item that references the whole record: for the planned retirement date when it retires the record, and for the awaiting-delivery mark when it delivers it.
• The server adds each entry to a record's change history and sets its person and time itself. The description of a change made on a page comes from that page; EA Sphere writes the description of the changes it makes itself, such as those from Jira, the weekly maintenance and a work item's effects on records. History cannot be edited. Each record keeps up to its latest 200 changes, fewer when they are long. The Change log report keeps every change within the retention period set under Settings, General; older changes are hidden at once and removed from storage by the weekly maintenance. When a record is deleted, its change history is deleted with it and its changes leave the Change log report at once; the weekly maintenance then removes them from the report's storage.
• EA Sphere also writes a Stage line whenever a save changes a record's stage, with the write that changes it and from what it stores. It attributes the line to the person whose save changed the stage, including a save that marks a work item kept only in EA Sphere as Done, or to EA Sphere when the change comes from Jira, such as a Jira work item being done, or from the weekly maintenance. The person's own change, Jira's part of a save and a work item's Done, Delivers and Retires effects each write their own line, so a record's Stage lines form one chain, each starting where the one before ended and the last ending at the stage shown, even when two saves are made at the same moment or a person's save of dates meets Jira's Done. A save whose own change and its work item's effect cancel out, such as clearing a future in-service date while a Delivers work item still applies, writes no Stage line. The one exception to the chain is a stage reached only because a date has passed, such as Planned to Active on the in-service date: it is not recorded as a change, and the next Stage line starts from that stage.
• Each person's acknowledgments and knowledge checks can be recorded only by that person, and are visible only to that person and to Jira administrators. The coverage report, and the Jira group membership it reads, are available only to Jira administrators.
• EA Sphere sets the times a tabletop exercise starts and ends. Once an exercise is completed, only its review and objective results can be changed. Once an exercise has started, only a Jira administrator can delete it. Each facilitator's notes can be written only by that facilitator, while the exercise is running and for 15 minutes after it ends. The person who wrote them can remove them during that time; after it, only a Jira administrator can.
• The server enforces each of these rules, whatever the browser sends.