I had a call on this topic with PTC last year and will be submitting a community idea. The problem here is that you can't give up too much information about the item the person doesn't have access to, because maybe they are not supposed to know anything about it.
For example, Let's say that person was not a US citizen, and the component was ITAR or EAR - and protected by a security label. In that case, that person isn't legally allowed to see that item. The problem in this case about letting someone know that the file exists (and metadata about it) may tell that person too much about the item.
From the discussions I had with Product management on this issue... Windchill looks first if you have access to something, if you do not you get the generic <Secured Access> error and Windchill stops there. It doesn't matter if you don't have access because the item is a working copy in someone else's workspace, because you are not part of the team, because it has a security label you don't have access to etc - at that point, Windchill doesn't know anymore information to tell you, because it stopped when it determined you don't have access. What makes it worse, the detailed logs on the back end generally don't contain any more info than the person doesn't have access to something
The idea I will be submitting when I get time will be for the UI to throw a more specific error like <Secured Action - You have attempted to access a file which is (Insert generic detailed error here)> where the generic error might be something like:
- Security Labeled and you do not have access to <security label value>'d items Please contact your administrator
- In a context you are not a team member of. Please contact your administrator
And to provide detailed MS logs on the back end that tell the ADMIN what the specific item is so it is quick for the admin to identify the root cause and send the user in the right direction to get it fixed.
