7.1 About Obtaining and Managing Your Rights

After initial connection to Oracle IRM Server, managing your rights is almost completely automatic.

When you attempt to open a sealed document that you have obtained or been sent, the Oracle IRM client software automatically contacts Oracle IRM Server to obtain your rights. If you have sufficient rights, you will be able to use the sealed document.

After you have established a connection to Oracle IRM Server, you may, if you have sufficient rights, be able to create new documents sealed to a context on that server. If you have not already connected to Oracle IRM Server (for example, by opening a document that someone else has sealed to that server), you will have to connect to the server manually (see Section 7.3, "Connecting to Oracle IRM Server Manually").

Note:

Because Oracle IRM Server will store data that allows you to be personally identified, on first contact with the server you will see a dialog asking you to confirm that you have read and accept the privacy policy associated with the sealed document. To use the sealed document, you must accept the privacy policy. You can cancel at this stage, in which case the document will not be shown, and no information about you will be stored on the server. This applies to 11g servers only and differs from previous releases of Oracle IRM.

Depending on how Oracle IRM has been configured, you might be prompted for your Oracle IRM credentials (user name and password).

Having requested your rights for the specific document you wanted to open, the software also sets up periodic rights synchronization. This automatic process means that you typically have all of your rights available to you even if Oracle IRM Server is temporarily unavailable. This enables you to work offline without further preparation. (The length of time that you can work offline is set by the Oracle IRM Server domain administrator on a per role basis.)

Note:

For offline working, you will never be asked for a username and password when accessing a sealed document. This is because authentication for offline working is based on your Windows login.

In some circumstances, you might want to manage your rights manually. For example:

If you are about to disconnect from the network and you want to be sure that your cached rights are as up-to-date as possible, you can synchronize manually.
If you want to change the computer on which you are using sealed documents (for example, to work on a home PC), you may need to check in your rights to Oracle IRM Server. This is because a right can be used from only one computer at a time, unless Oracle IRM Server has been specifically configured to allow the use of multiple computers. When you check in, any open documents using your rights are closed. Another computer can then synchronize to the server, with the same account, and obtain those rights.
If you have finished working at a computer that is shared by other users, you should consider checking in your rights manually.