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A user in Cascade Server is any individual who uses the content management system. Users of Cascade are defined by their User IDs, Role designations, and the Group(s) they belong to. Users can be viewed, edited, or deleted by clicking on the username in the Administration area, and selecting the appropriate choices.

Introduction to Users

Every user is identified by the system with his or her User ID. A password is then used forAuthentication and the full name and e-mail serve as contact information for the user. The group and role membership help to determine the privileges a user has in the system and help establish his or her access to various system resources.

User ID

User ID is short for User Identification and is also referred to as username. A User ID is a unique, sequence of characters used to identify a user of Cascade Server. User IDs are used to authenticate the user upon login and for identifying the user for the purposes of logging, access, and resource management. Usernames are chosen upon user creation, and may consist of numbers, letters, and the underscore ( _ ).

Role

Roles must be assigned to each user (and group) in the system in order to determine which tasks that user (or group) may perform.

Group

Because a Group is made up of one or more users with common permissions, placing multiple users into groups is a great way to customize permissions settings in the Cascade system.

Assigning Permissions

Permissions determine which users or groups have access to a specific folder or asset. Administrators are able to modify read or write permissions and apply them to multiple individual users, or multiple groups.

Audit Trail

The Audit Trail is a tool for Administrators to see a summary of activities performed in the system by a particular user, group, role, or for the entire system. Selecting the audit trail for a group or role will display the actions performed by all users belonging to that group or role. A date/time filter is provided as part of the Audit Trail view and is useful for filtering the results into a more specific timeframe.

The record for each event includes:

• the username of the user who performed the activity

• the time of the activity

• the type of action performed (login, edit, publish etc.)

• the information about that action (whether the asset was edited or published)

• the IP address of the computer from which the user logged in

• the asset type

• a link to the location of the particular asset

Setting-Up Users in Cascade

Changing Your User Preferences

The user preferences determine settings unique to the current user.

• Language - This allows users to select their default language.  If none is selected, the global preference will be used.

• Item List Size - This allows users to limit the number of items that appear under history, folder contents, audit trails, and administration containers.

• After Publishing Assets - This determines whether the system will automatically forward the user's screen to the publish status.

• Default Chooser Width - Enter the width in pixels that you would like to set for all chooser windows.  Changing these values will override the global preference.

• Default Chooser Height - Enter the height in pixels that you would like to set for all chooser windows.Changing these values will override the global preference.

• Change Password - This allows users to change their own passwords.

ADDITIONAL NOTES - If Cascade Server was configured to synchronize with LDAP or a custom authentication system, users will not be able to change their password here. If you are a system user and having trouble modifying your user preferences, contact your System Administrator.

To Create a New User (Administrators)

Each person using the system should have his/her own user account. Users are managed in the Administration area.

To create a new user:

1. Go to the Administration area and click the Users, Groups, & Roles tab on the left navigation bar.

2. Click Create New User.

3. On the General tab:
   • Username - The name the user will be known by in the system.

   • Full Name - The full name of the user (OPTIONAL)

   • Email - The email to which messages and notifications will be sent. (OPTIONAL)

   • Authentication - Determines whether Normal (password) or Custom (single sign-on solution via a custom plugin) authentication is required for this user.

   • Password - User passwords must be 4-16 alphanumeric characters in length.

   • Enabled - This allows you to activate and deactivate the user without deleting the account.

   • Groups - Select the group(s) to which the user should belong. Assigning multiple groups to each user is an easy way to customize the permissions options for each user.

   • Default Group - Assigning a default group allows the administrator to assign this user a default folder and dashboard settings that are customized at the group level.

   • Role - Select the desired explicit role of the user. The user's actual role is determined by the highest overall role when taking into account the user's explicit role AND the roles of the groups the user belongs to.
4. Click Submit to save your new user.

Users can be viewed, edited, or deleted by clicking on the username in the Administration area and selecting the appropriate choices.

In addition, all user activity may be monitored by clicking on the username in the Administration area and selecting Workflows or Audit Trail.

User Security/Monitoring User Activity (Administrators)

Assigning Permissions

Permissions determine which users or groups have access to a specific folder or asset.  You may grant read or write permissions to multiple individual users, or multiple groups.

To specify permissions for a folder or asset:

1. Select the folder or asset from the left asset tree

2. Click on the Access tab.

3. To specify one or more users, select each desired user from the Unassigned box, and click the green forward arrow to bring them into the Read box.  Once users have been entered into Read box, you can then select from those users which ones you want to have Write access.  Users left in the Unassigned box will have the default permissions level, as specified under All.

4. To specify one or more groups, select each desired group from the Unassigned box, and click the green forward arrow to bring them into the Read box.  Once groups have been entered into Read box, you can then select from those groups which ones you want to have Write access. Groups left in the Unassigned box will have the default permissions level, as specified under All.

5. You may also restrict the folder or asset for all users by selecting the appropriate radio button under All. This will determine the default level of permissions for any users not specified above.

6. If you are defining permissions for a folder, select whether or not these permissions should be replicated for all child folders by checking or unchecking Apply to children.

7. Click Submit to save your changes.

PLEASE NOTE - If a user or group is given read or write access to a child folder, read access is automatically granted to all parent folders and higher to facilitate navigation to the specified folder.

Audit Trail (Administrators)

The Audit Trail is accessible from the Administration area and gives a detailed account of all activity that has taken place within the system.

The Audit Trail can be accessed for an individual user, a group, or a role. Simply click on the user, group, or role name in the Users, Groups, Roles section, and select the Audit Trail tab.

At the top of the Audit Trail are Start and End Dates with which you may filter results. Simply select a date range and click Filter.  You may also filter results according to action type.

The results of the audit trail offer the following values:

• User - Clicking on the user will show statistics for that user.

• Time - This shows the time that the action was completed.

• Action - Actions include: Login, Failed Login, Logout, Started Workflow, Advanced Workflow, Edit, Start Edit, Copy, Create, Reference, Delete, Delete and Unpublish, Check-in, Check-out, Version Activation, Publish, Unpublish.

• Information - This offers additional information including the Asset modified or the IP address of login. It will also provide an Asset Link which will take you to the view for the relevant asset.

Audit trail records can be selected by clicking the checkbox next to each record. Selected records can be deleted by selecting Delete from the Action dropdown.

Authentication

Login Authentication is the process of checking usernames and passwords provided at a login form against authorized credentials. It is accomplished by CMS in one of three ways:

1. Built-in authentication, which stores user information in the database used for other CMS data storage

2. LDAP authentication, accomplished by querying your LDAP-enabled directory server (Active Directory, OpenLDAP, etc.) to retrieve user information.

3. Custom login authentication. This authentication is determined by the administrator of the client network. Please consult your network or CMS administrator for more details.

With the built-in authentication, the administrator must create an account for each user from within the CMS before they can access the system. This is accomplished from the 'Users, Groups, and Roles' option in the 'Administration' area.

Using LDAP authentication, on the other hand, the CMS authenticates users against a directory on an LDAP-enabled server (usually separate from the server housing the CMS), which could be a pre-existing directory server. This allows you to maintain users for the CMS and other purposes centrally, without having to create multiple accounts for each user.

A custom authentication will vary depending on the particular circumstances. Typically, there is a single sign-on service, which will authenticate a user against a system separate from Cascade Server. This is usually the same process a user might go through to check organizational email or to use other distributed software.

User References

• Users & Groups Import

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