Defining Users (Release 4.1)
For SmartServer 4.2 and higher, see Defining Users.
For SmartServer 4.0 and prior, see Defining Users (Release 4.0 and Prior).
You can create and manage SmartServer user accounts if you are signed into a SmartServer account with system administrator, owner, or supervisor privileges. User account management includes assigning roles and capabilities of each user account. To limit a user's access to specific devices, first assign the device to a context and then assign the user access to specific contexts.
This section consists of the following:
Creating a User
You can add a new SmartServer user by creating a user account. User types can be User, Owner, Supervisor, or Admin. Only Admin users can create an Admin user type.
To create a new user account, follow these steps:
Open the CMS Users widget. Click the Expand button ( ).
Click the Action button () and select the Create User action.
The Create User view → General tab appears.
Enter the following information for the new user:
Username
Email
First Name
Last Name
Select the User Type as follows:
User – is assigned by the system administrator, owner, or supervisor, and has access to widgets as specified on the Access tab and will be limited to the contexts specified on the Contexts tab. See the following section, Setting User Access and Context Permissions, for more information regarding how to set these permissions.
If you select User, then a User Role field and a Save As button appear.
The User Role field has the following default user roles:Field Technician – initial setting is read/write access for Device Types, Devices, Datapoint Properties, and Datapoints widgets, and read-only access for all other widgets.
Scheduler – initial setting is full access for the Calendar widget and read-only access for all other widgets.
System Integrator – initial setting is full access for all widgets.
If you select a user role and modify any of the widget access settings, then the settings associated with a user role will be changed.You can can create a new user role by clicking the Save As button. A dialog box appears (shown below) prompting you to enter a name for the new user role. Enter a name for the new user role and click Save to copy the current widget access settings to the new user role and to save the new user role.
Owner – has access to all tasks in all contexts.
Supervisor – has access to all tasks in specified contexts, except for changing the licensing customer ID, returning license keys, and adding license keys.
Admin – has access to all tasks in all contexts; can only be created by an Admin user type.
Set the user password in Password field. The Confirm Password field appears requiring you to match the password.
Instead of manually setting the password, you can click the Generate Password button for a password to be automatically created by the system. You can enable the Send Password on Save option to send the current password to the email address that is provided. This option may be useful when an Admin or Owner creates a new user or when the password is created using the Generate Password button. The Send Password on Save option is disabled if a new password has not been entered or generated, an SMTP server is not defined, or an email address is not specified. If this option is enabled, then the CMS will send the new password to the user using the configured SMTP server.
To display the disguised password characters, click the Show Password button (). See Managing SmartServer IoT Passwords for more information.Optionally, set the Session Timeout (minutes) field with the number of minutes after which a user session will be closed, requiring the user to login again if they still need access. Users will be able to view their timeout, but only an admin, owner, or supervisor can change them. Valid values are None (blank) or an integer value from 1 to 10080 minutes. None means that there is no user session timeout. The default is 90 minutes.
Optionally, set the Password Expiration (days) field with the number of days when the password for the user will expire after either setting the expiration option, or changing the password after the expiration option was set. Valid values are None (blank) or an integer value from 1 to 36500 days. The default is None for no password expiration. This field may only be modified by Admin, Owner, and Supervisor user types, and is disabled for admin user types. This field is only applicable when the Authentication Method is set to Basic.
Optionally, set the User Account Deactivation (days) field with the number of days when the user account will be deactivated after either setting the deactivation option, or the last user login after the deactivation option was set. Valid values are None (blank) or an integer value from 0 to 36500 days. The default is None for no user account deactivation. This field may only be modified by Admin, Owner, and Supervisor user types, and is disabled for admin and owner user types.
Optionally, set the Tags field with an optional comma-separated list of tags for the user. Each tag may be a key, or a key=value pair, where a key is a string of up to 100 characters, and the optional value is a string of up to 64K characters. This field may only be modified by Admin, Owner, and Supervisor user type.
For Admin user:
Optionally, set a Google API Key for maps display. The Google API Key is used for access to Google Maps for maps display in the Locations widget (prior to SmartServer 3.4, the Locations widget was called the Map widget). The default admin user will have an embedded key. New admin users should be supplied with a key in order to view maps. The same key that is used for the default admin user can also be used for new admin users.
Optionally, set an External Login. This login is used to associate a user with an external account. It is needed to link the CMS user accounts with SAML provider accounts (i.e., the email address) or when OAuth authentication is enabled.
Click Save to create the new user.