Adding, Editing, and Deleting Users

Users: The Basics

Users are alternate logins to your ExaVault account. When you create user accounts, you grant other people access to the contents of your account. Users can log in using web browser or Desktop FTP clients.

In order to provide access to your account, you can either create a share or create users. Generally speaking, you'll want to create a user:

• if you want to give someone, such as an employee, ongoing access to your account, or a part of your account.
• if you want to let someone create and manage shares, view sharing activity, manage notifications, change account settings, etc.
• if you want to give someone access via FTP or SFTP.

Users may be full access, or may be restricted to:

• Only log in to a specific sub-folder.
• Allow (or not) downloading files.
• Allow (or not) uploading files.
• Allow (or not) managing files and creating new folders.
• Allow (or not) listing and viewing files on the server.
• Allow (or not) deleting files on the server.
• Allow (or not) undeleting files on the server.
• Allow (or not) sending files and creating shared folders.
• Allow (or not) setting up notifications.
• Allow (or not) changing of their login password.
• Allow (or not) see the custom data associated with a receive folder.

Setting Up Users

To access the users page:

1. Log in to ExaVault file manage as the main account user or as an admin user.

2. Click the Users link in the menu bar.

On the users page, you will see an overview of all of the user accounts that you have created.

• To add a new user, click the ADD NEW USER button.
• To edit an existing user, click the Edit User button in the drop-down menu next to the user you wish to edit.
• To delete a user, click the Delete User button in the drop-down menu next to the user you wish to delete.

Adding a User

To add a user:

1. Log in as the main account user and click on the Users tab.

2. Click on the ADD NEW USER button near the top of the screen.

3. Fill in the username, nickname, email address, password, and other details.

4. Click the PERMISSIONS tab if you need to set a home folder or assign specific permissions to the user. Complete any permissions changes.

5. Click the SAVE CHANGES button.

The user will be added to the users view and will be able to log in immediately.

When you add a user, you will see a window where you may enter the following details:

Usernames can be just about anything you like, but be aware of these restrictions:

• Usernames must be alpha-numeric and a minimum of three characters.
• Each username must be unique. For example:
  - You cannot have two accounts with a username of fred.
  - The username fred may only ever log into one FTP account. This means that if another ExaVault customer has created an account for fred, you may not also make an account for fred
  - You may find it easiest to use an email address as a username.

Managing User Roles and Permissions

On the permissions tab of the user setup screen, you have the option to determine whether the user account is an admin user or a normal user. For normal users, you can restrict the user to specific activities as well as restrict the user to an assigned home directory.

• User - Normal users may be limited in ways that admin users are not, such as being restricted to a home folder. Normal users may not view activity logs, user accounts or rebranding options.
• Admin - Admin users have all of the same rights as the master user of the account. Admin users also have full add/delete rights to all folders.

For a normal user, you also have the option to toggle the following permissions ON and OFF:

Setting a User's Home Folder

The home folder is the “base” directory for a user who is not an admin. When a user logs in, the user will be taken directly to that folder and will not see any files or folders outside of the home folder.

To change a user's home directory:

1. Click the PERMISSIONS tab, either while you are adding a new user or while editing an existing user.

2. Click the change link under the What is this user's home folder? question.

3. Click the folder that you want to set as the user's home folder. You can also create folders by clicking the NEW FOLDER button.

4. Click the OK button to save the home folder setting.

Advanced Usage: Nested Sub-Directories

A user only has access to the home folder you specify, as well as any folders underneath that folder. You can use this to your advantage. Consider the following example:

In this case, the clients user will have access to both Fred & Barney's folders. However, Fred & Barney will only be able to access their own folders and will not be able to access each other's folders (or any folders for other clients).

Some Final Notes About Home Directories

• You may create multiple users with the same home directory.
• When a user is deleted, it does not delete the data in the user's home directory, so you may safely add or change users without affecting data on the server.
• You cannot remove a folder in the file manager if that folder is (or contains) the home directory for a user.

Editing a User

Editing a user is very similar to adding a user. When you click the Edit button, the user entry opens for editing.

To edit a user:

1. Click on the Edit User button in the drop-down menu located next to the user entry you want to edit.

2. Edit the user's details.

3. Click the SAVE CHANGES button to save your changes.

Deleting a User

To delete a user:

1. Click on the Delete User button in the drop-down menu located next to the user entry you want to delete.

2. Click the DELETE button to confirm deletion.

Locking a User

Locking a user will disable that user's access to all services while still allowing you to reserve the username. Locked users will receive an error when attempting to log in to the system.

To lock a user:

• Click on the Lock User button in the drop-down menu located next to the user entry you want to disable.
• To disable an account on a specific date, click the add expiration link while editing a user and pick the expiration date.

To re-activate a locked user:

• Click on the Unlock button in the drop-down menu located next to the user entry you want to make active.

Login as User

As an admin, if you wish to test that a particular user account has the correct rights, you can click the Log in as user link below that user's username. You will be logged out of the file manager and automatically logged in as that user.

Searching For A User

Has your users' list gotten too long? You can use the search feature to quickly locate specific users. At the top of the screen, you'll see a Search users… box. To search, type the text you want to find in that box and then press Enter. When you press Enter, the screen will display all of the matching users. Matching users will have the search text in or more of the following fields:

• The nickname
• The username
• The email address
• Their home folder

To return to the normal list of users, click the clear results link above the search results.

Username Uniqueness

When adding a new user, you might get the following message: “This username has already been taken by another account”

This message means that username was already taken by another account in our system. All usernames must be unique across all accounts in our system. So if another client took username 'sally', you can't create user 'sally'.

It works that way because FTP usernames are global – when you connect and say “my username is 'sally'”, our servers don't know whether you want 'sally' connected with your account or the 'sally' connected with somebody else's account.

One thing you can do when creating names is to use email addresses as usernames. The chances that another company is working with users who have the same email address as your users is very small. Another option when creating usernames is to use some sort of standard prefix, so 'sally' is created as user 'mycompany_sally'.