Realms are a combination of roles and permissions for a site. Every Sakai sites has its own unique realm. When a new site is created, it is based on a template site and copies the roles and permissions from the template. Modifications to roles and permissions within a template realm will affect all new sites created from that template. However, once created, an individual, non-template site's realm can be modified to create custom roles and/or permissions within that specific realm, independent of the original template. Realms can be viewed and modified using the administrative Realms tool.

Site Template Realms

Depending on the type of site being created, one of the following templates is used.

• If the site is a user workspace, the template used is !site.user.
• If the site is not a user workspace, and has a type configured, the template used will be !site.template.<type> where <type> is the site type (e.g. !site.template.course, !site.template.project, etc.).
• If there is no site type defined, the default template is !site.template.

User Template Realms

User accounts are also based on realms.

• !user.template.<usertype>, this realm depends on the user type. Do not confuse this with the user's role.
• !user.template

Site Helper Template

The !site.helper template can be used to force permissions on a role for all existing sites. This is useful if you have need to add new roles or change role permissions in all sites after many sites have been created.