Setting user access permissions for the new menu group and its items

Last Updated : Jun 05, 2026 |

About this task

The features.xml file specifies which user roles have access to a menu group and each item in the group.

Procedure

  1. In an ASCII text editor, create a configuration features.xml file in the TomcatHome/lib/extensions/UniqueDirectoryName/config directory.

    Where, TomcatHome is the directory in which the Tomcat servlet engine software is installed and UniqueDirectoryName is the directory defined in Defining a unique extensions directory. The default is /opt/Tomcat/tomcat.

  2. Create the basic template for features.xml by adding the following tags: 
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<features 
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
         xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="features.xsd">
</features>
  3. For each menu group to be defined in configuration menu.xml, add the <category> and </category> tags just before the </features> tag.
    Note:

    For each new menu group defined in the menu.xml configuration file, you need to define the <category> and </category> tags in the features.xml file.

  4. For each <category> tag added, specify the following attributes:

    Attributes

    Example

    Description

    name=”groupTag”, where groupTag is the identifier defined for the menu group in the menu.xml configuration file.

    Specify name=”newMenuGroupIdentifier”

    The identifier of the menu group defined in the configuration menu.xml file.
  5. Specify a <feature> tag for each new menu item after the <category> and before the corresponding </category> tags.
    Note:

    For each new menu item defined in the menu.xml configuration file, you need to define a <feature> tag within the corresponding <category> tag in the features.xml file.

  6. For each <feature> tag added, specify the following attributes:

    Attributes

    Example

    Description

    name=”itemTag”, where itemTag is the identifier defined for the menu item in the menu.xml configuration file.

    Specify name=”newMenuItemIdentifier”.

    The identifier of the menu item defined in the configuration menu.xml file.

    allow=”roles”, where roles is a combination of any of the following roles separated by commas:

    • administration

    • maintenance

    • operations

    • usermanager

    • auditor

    To define that this menu group is accessible only to the administrator and user manager roles , specify allow= ”administration, usermanager”.

    This attribute defines the roles that have permission to view this menu group.
    Note:

    Ensure that any user role specified for a menu item is also specified for the entire group.

  7. Ensure each of the new <feature> tags have a corresponding</feature> tag.
  8. Save and close the file.

Example

For example, if you have a group called myMenuGroup with menu items myUsersItem, myAdminItem, and myUserMgrItem, and you want to specify the following:

  • Users with any user role can see the myMenuGroup and myUsersItem groups.

  • Only the users with the Administration user role can see the myAdminItem group.

  • Users with the User Manager user role can see the myUserMgrItem group.

See the following example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<features
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
        xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="feature.xsd">
<category name="myMenuGroup" 
  <feature name="myUsersItem" allow="administration,operations,maintenance,auditor,usermanager">
  </feature>
  <feature name="myAdminItem" allow="administration"/>
  </feature>
  <feature name="myUserMgrItem" allow="administrator, usermanager"/>
  </feature>
</category>
</features>