How to restrict activation rights in cq5 to a particular user group

The Problem

You want to prevent a particular user group from having the rights to activate a DAM image and instead require them to follow a publish workflow.

The Solution

1. Log in as administrator.

2. Click on the Users link

3. Double click on the user group you wish to restrict Activate / Deactivate access to.

In this case, we will use content-authors

4. Click on the permissions link

Navigate down to /libs/wcm/core/content/damadmin/tabs/searchpanel/actions/

Unselect Read Access for Activate and Deactivate.

Navigate down to /libs/wcm/core/content/damadmin/actions

Unselect Read Access for Activate and Deactivate.

Next, log in as a user who belongs to only the content-authors group such as author.

Alternately, you can impersonate the user, by clicking on Administrator in the top right hand corner, and selecting author as the user to impersonate. If you accidently select a user without dam rights, have a look at this post.

If you navigate to the dam, you will notice that under this user, the activate and deactivate options are no longer available to this user.

Next, Using a Workflow to publish DAM images through an approval process.