User Login and Contact Information

The User Login and Contact Information window allows you to either display information about a user account, create a new user account or create an alternative login for a user account. The function varies depending on where the window is opened from. The following sections provide a description of all three functions.

Display User Information

If you have an existing account in the database, you can display the information for your own user account by choosing My Portal > Users > My Profile.

You can edit the contact details in your own user account; however, only users with the "Manage users and logins" permission can edit the security group that has been assigned to your account.

IMPORTANT: The domain and username fields provide the authentication that allows you to access the database. For existing user accounts in Oracle and SQL Server databases, these two fields cannot be modified because the information is associated with the login that allows the database to recognize the user.

In standard databases with login security, you have the option to edit the username, but you must have a user with the "Manage users and logins" permission inactivate the old username that you used to access the database and create a new account with the desired username; otherwise, simply changing your username may cause you to be inadvertently locked out of the database.

Click the Active Directory button if you wish to update your contact details based on information stored in the Microsoft Active Directory® for the current domain and username.

Create and Edit User Accounts

If you have the "Manage users and logins" permission, you can create new accounts, as well as display or edit the information for any existing user account in the database. To do this, click the Add or Edit button in the Manage Repository Security window.

There are two ways to create a new account:

Directly enter the username, contact information and security group(s) for the new user account.
Use the Active Directory button to import user information stored in the Microsoft Active Directory® for the current domain.

For SQL Server databases, the Create SQL Server login check box will be displayed. Select the check box if you want to create an individual SQL Server login when you create each new Synthesis user account. The SQL Server login will be created if a login does not already exist for the username and if you have the appropriate authority in SQL Server to create logins. If you clear this check box, the user can still be recognized by SQL Server if a) an individual SQL Server login was created in advance in SQL Server, b) the user belongs to an Active Directory group that has a SQL Server login shared by all members of the group or c) the user connects to the repository with an enterprise connection file (*.rserp) that impersonates another Windows user account that has a SQL Server login. See SQL Server Logins or Using Windows Impersonation.

To allow the user account to log in to the current database, select the Active check box at the bottom of the window. You can temporarily or permanently prevent the account from accessing the database by clearing the check box.

Create Alternative Login

A secure database uses Windows authentication to identify the user; therefore, the user must be logged in to a computer that uses the same domain/username that is defined in that user's account. If the user needs to connect to the database from a different domain, you can set up an alternative login that will allow the user to access the database without domain authentication. This is not necessary for non-secure databases.

If you have the "Manage users and logins" permission, you can set up an alternative login for an account by selecting the account in the Manage Repository Security window and then clicking the Edit button. This opens a User Login and Contact Information window that has two tabs: a User Info tab and an Alternative Login tab.

In the Alternative Login tab, select the check box to enable the use of an alternative login for the user account. When the setting is enabled, you can create a username and password combination that will allow the user to access the database. The username and password combination must be unique, and the password is CaSe SeNsiTiVe. You can temporarily or permanently disable the use of an alternative login for the account by clearing the check box.

The alternative login must be set up in advance. If you know, for example, that the user will need to make a copy of a standard database and open it on a computer that is not on your company's network or that the user will need to connect to an enterprise database from a computer that is not on your company's network, you must set up the alternative login and provide the user with the login information beforehand.