- Why You Want To Use IRM
- Types of Access You Can Control
- Setting Up IRM
- Setting Permissions
- Removing Permissions
Types of Access You Can Control
First, decide what kind of access you want to offer to those who will read your work. Are you actually willing to let them make changes, for example? Your answer obviously might not be the same for each user. One nice feature of IRM is that you don't need to specify control permission for yourself, as authors always retain full control of their documents. This feature can be heartily appreciated by any of us who have password-protected a document and then choked when that password proved elusive. (Not that yours truly has ever forgotten a password.)
For ages, Microsoft Word has offered the option to post documents on a server with read-only access. With IRM, you can improve on that capability by offering specified individuals Read, Change, or Full control as shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Levels of IRM Access
|
Read |
Edit |
|
Copy |
Read |
X |
|
|
|
Change |
X |
X |
|
X |
Full Control |
X |
X |
X |
X |
IRM allows you to refine, modify, or expand these access levels by doing any of the following:
Adding print permission to Read or Change access
Adding copy permission to Read access
Specifying a date for document expiration
Specifying an email address where users can contact you to ask you for further permissions
Requiring users to connect to an Internet site to confirm their credentials