Editing MainBoss User Records

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You create or modify user records using the User editor. The usual way to open the editor is to click New User or Edit in the View section of Administration | MainBoss Users.

Only someone with SQL Server Administration privileges can register new users with SQL Server. You will receive an error message if you try to add a new user but do not have appropriate permissions. The error occurs when you try to Save the new user's record.

The user editor window contains the following:

Details section: Provides general information about the user.

Contact: Contact information for this user. The contact information is given by a record in the Contacts table. For more on contacts, see Contacts.

Description: A description of the user (typically the person's real name).

Authentication Credential: The name under which the user will access the MainBoss database. Click the "..." button to open a window where you can specify this name. For more information, see The Database User Table.

Comments: Any comments you want to associate with the user.

Security Roles section: Specifies security permissions for the user. For more on roles, see Security Roles.

By adding a security role to the user's list of roles, you give the user all security permissions associated with that role. Each role record has a "Comments" field explaining what permissions are associated with the role.

A user may have any number of assigned security roles. We expect that most people will have multiple security roles.

If you assign someone a "full" permission, you don't have to assign a "view" permission too. For example, if you assign someone the WorkOrder role (permission to edit work orders), you don't have to assign WorkOrderView (permission to view work orders) since WorkOrder automatically implies WorkOrderView. Similarly, "view" permissions automatically imply "summary" permissions; for example, WorkOrderSummary isn't necessary if someone already has WorkOrderView.

We recommend that you be generous in assigning people "summary" roles (e.g. UnitSummary) since these provide a small amount of information that is useful for people performing many different jobs within your organization.

Important: If a user has no assigned security roles, that person will not be able to use MainBoss in any way. Therefore, you should normally assign at least one security role to each user.

After you assign security roles to a user, MainBoss makes it easy to test the effects of those security roles. For more, see the description of Evaluate Security As in Viewing MainBoss Users.

Assign Role: Opens a window which lets you specify one or more roles for this user. For more information, see Assigning Security Roles to Users.

: This drop-down button offers several possible actions:

Edit: Opens an editor window to let you edit the selected record.

View: Opens an editor window where you can examine the selected record.

: Removes the assigned security role from this user.

: Lets you search through the list of records for a particular record. For more information, see Searching for a Particular Record. The button has an accompanying drop-down list containing the following:

Find Next: Uses the same search condition(s) as your most recent search and finds the next record in the table that matches the condition(s). If the search reaches the end of the table without finding a matching record, it goes to the start of the table and continues the search.

Find Previous: Same as Find Next except that it goes backward in the table. If the search reaches the start of the table without finding a matching record, it goes to the end of the table and continues the search.

: Updates the list to reflect any recent changes.

Save: Saves the current record. The editor window stays open in case you want to make more changes to the same record.

Save & New: Saves the current record and sets up the window for you to enter a new record. Fields in the new record will be blank or set to default values.

Save & Close: Saves the current record and closes the editor window.

Cancel: Closes the window without saving any changes you've made to the record since the last time you saved. When you Save the record, the Cancel button changes to Close, indicating that you can safely close the window without losing any changes.

Close: Closes the window. This button only appears after you've saved changes with Save or before you've entered any data at all. Otherwise, the button is labeled Cancel.

Note that the names in MainBoss's Users list must be individual SQL Authentication credentials; they cannot be groups. In MainBoss, Authentication Credentials are associated with records in order to create an audit trail. This is why MainBoss itself doesn't accept group authorizations—an audit should record exactly who made a particular change, which means tracking the individual Authentication Credentials, not just a group name.

For more on users and groups, see Users. For more on viewing user/groups, see Viewing MainBoss Users. For more on editors in general, see Using Editors.

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