Organize Users and Views

In this module, you will learn about Views, which are user-focused versions of Element Groups, and Users.

This module consists of the following exercises:

Understand Users, Groups, and Roles

As mentioned previously, user management in up.time is the intersection of individual user profiles, user roles, and user groups. this arrangement of user-related objects is particularly useful for larger deployments, where a diverse and large set of users will want to access up.time for different reasons. For this exercise and module, we will keep the steps simple, but explain what could be done with a larger deployment.

Click the Users panel, which displays the Users page.

In this list, you can see that up.time has two default users (admin, or "up.time Administrator" and sample, or "Sample User"). Each one is assigned to its own user role (superadmin, and user), but both belong the same SysAdmin User Group:

To get an idea of which activities in up.time are determined by user role, view the permissions for the user role by clicking its name in the User Role column: 

This user role is, for the most part, a "read-only" role, which is appropriate for the non-administrator sample user that is associated with it. 

User roles imply access privileges, while user groups imply domain of use. The way users are managed, with the combination of user role and user group, is useful because it accommodates, for example, Linux admins of varying access levels.

Let's work with this pair of default up.time users, and make them match completely unique personas. They already each are associated with their own role; let's put them in unique user groups.

Create a New User Group

In the previous module, you created a top-level Production Element Group, along with Linux Servers and Windows Servers child Element Groups (in other words, you organized your servers first by function, then platform). Let's continue with this example, and turn the default sample user into a Linux server admin.

1. In the left pane, click Add New User Group.
2. In the Add User Group pop-up window, provide Linux Admins as the User Group Name.

3. Select the sample user from the Available Users list, then click Add.

4. Select Linux Servers from the Available Element Groups, then click Add. 

   Your user group configuration should look similar to the following:
   

   A web of relationships

   Due to an object-based approach, you can associate Elements, Element Groups, and Views with user groups, and vice versa. Later in this module, we will create a View, and associate it with the user group we are creating now. If we had created that View first, we would be able to make that association now.

   Also note the Elements and Element Groups in the user group definition determine which Elements members of the group have "access" to. This is one way that user groups imply domain of use. This property works in conjunction with user roles: a user group determines what a user has access to, while the user role determines what they can do with the things they can access.

5. Click Save, then click Close Window. In the main UI window, the Users panel is displayed.

Validation: The user group you have just created includes the sample user. Conversely, from the user profile (and UI) perspective, the sample user is now a member of the newly created user group. Also note the double group membership for this user; this is a basic example of user-related objects.

Edit an Existing User's Profile

You now want to make this sample user an exclusive member of the Linux Admins user group. This means removing it from the default SysAdmin User Group.

1. Click the edit icon beside the sample user:
   
2. In the Edit User pop-up window, edit the user's group membership. Select the SysAdmin User Group entry, then click Remove.
3. Click Save, then click Close Window.
   You are returned to the main UI window, where the User page is in view.

Validation: View the users list again, and note that the sample user's group membership is now back to a single user group: Linux Admins. This sample user is ready to administer some Linux servers!

Create a View

1. Click My Infrastructure.
2. In the left pane, click Add View.
3. Configure your View as follows:
   
   
   • Provide Linux Servers as the View Name.
   • Select the Linux Servers Element Group from the Available Elements list, displaying the Linux server Element you added in the previous module.
   • Select the Element and click Add.
   • From the list of Available User Groups, select and Add the Linux Admins group.
4. Click Save, then click Close Window.

Validation Step (My Infrastructure): In the main UI window, the My Infrastructure view updates with your newly created Web Servers view. Expand it to see that its contents match what you added from the Web Servers Element Group.

Validation (as Sample User): 

1. Click the logged-in admin user name (found along the top tool bar), then click Logout.
2. At the log-in screen, log in as the default sample user.
   This sample user has an ID and password of sample and sample.
3. Once logged in as the sample user, click My Infrastructure.
   

Consider the following:

1. • You can see the View intended solely for the sample user.
   • This sample user sees this View because you configured it to be associated with the user group that the user belongs to.
   • The user can also see only the same Elements under My Infrastructure because, in the second exercise in this module, you configured the user group to include the Linux Servers Element Groups.
   • As explored in the first exercise, this user's role limits activity to view-only tasks. To illustrate, if you click the gear beside an Element, you will not see an Edit option in the pop-up menu.
   • The user cannot see anything else on the My Infrastructure panel, since they are administrative actions.

Using Views in conjunction with user roles and user groups can accommodate a diverse set of end users that have access to view, add, edit, or delete the correct Elements or up.time objects. 

Before moving to the next module, log back in as the admin user (the ID and password were set when the Monitoring Station was first run after being installed).