Navigation for a role based system

[nassau]

I'm getting started on sketching up the navigation for a role based system.

I'd like to hear input from other coders/designers on good solutions for determining navigation for such a system. One of my unsolved problems is how to determine what links to present to the user. Since any user can have any combination of roles i need to figure out a good way to combine all the links.

Naturally there needs to be a basic set of links. But each role requires a more or less unique set of links on its own. Just adding them all might lead to an enormous navigation bar, which is not good.

This is more a "logical" design question, rather than a techincal question. Please add your input on the subject, and feel free to ask me for more info if i'm unclear.

Thanks :)

[Enki]

One way may be divvying up the destination links based on functional categories, then use role filters to determine which would be displayed. Display the links underneath their categories where the category header is the top of the toolbar, links are category aligned below in a link area that can be sized to the minimum necessary to hold the needed links.

If you made the default behavior to show no links and a role filter's job to "activate" links you don't have any worries of multi-role conflicts. Either a persons roles turn on links or they never see them. Thgis works simply as long as you don't explicitly need to segregate links based on role.

[nassau]

Yes, I made it so that roles (or permissions actually), "activate" links.

I'm not even sure what my problem is - all I know is that i have one! I'm guessing one side of the problem is determining what can be done automatically and what needs to be done manually when setting up the website.