An approach for managing functionalities within a system generally involves the use of indicators, such as privileges, that are associated with the functionalities. Each functionality is associated with an indicator that is used to determine whether the associated functionality is available for use by an end user. A determination is made that one or more particular functionalities are to be associated with the response because the particular indicator is included in the set of indicators and corresponds to the one or more functionalities. If the system includes functionalities for which indicators are not included in the set of indicators, those functionalities are not reflected in the response. The response is sent so that information regarding the one or more particular functionalities can be displayed via a user interface. In some implementations, an access control mechanism can use privileges for determining functionality availability and privileges for determining user access.