Managing User Accounts and User Groups

While WhatsUp Gold allows you to create and customize user groups as well as enable individual user rights for those groups in order to meet your specific network monitoring needs, you can also take advantage of several preconfigured user groups which have common and/or logical combinations of user rights enabled to reflect typical user group profiles. Use the Add New User dialog to manage user accounts and user group access to application features such as Account Administration, System Administration, Monitoring, Devices, APM (Application Performance Monitoring), and Reports.

Add New User Accounts

• User Name. User accounts allow users to log in to the web interface of WhatsUp Gold and control access to data and functionality either through direct assignment of user rights or by membership in a user group.
• Authentication Type:
  • Internal authentication. The user account is created using the Add User dialog, and will authenticate using an Internal password.
  • LDAP authentication. The user account is created using the Add User dialog with the authentication type set to LDAP. The user will log in to WhatsUp Gold using the credentials used to authenticate with their LDAP server. For Active Directory authentication, the user account is created when a user that belongs to an AD group that has been mapped to a WhatsUp Gold group initially authenticates with WhatsUp Gold. The user will log in to WhatsUp Gold using their Windows domain credentials, which must be configured from the Configure External Authentication dialog. For more information, see Setting LDAP or Cisco ACS credentials.
  • Cisco ACS. The user account is created when a user with a Cisco ACS authentication server has been configured to authenticate with Cisco ACS from WhatsUp Gold. The user will log in to WhatsUp Gold using their Cisco ACS credentials, which must be configured from the Configure External Authentication dialog. For more information, see Setting LDAP or Cisco ACS credentials.
• Password. Enter user password. Note that Password complexity policy may be enabled and require validation with the following criteria:
  • A password must contain a mix of at least one lowercase letter, one uppercase letter, one number and one special character. Special characters are defined to be any character in the set:
  1. `!@#$%^&*()_+-={}\:";'<>?,./
  2. A password must meet minimum length requirements.
  3. A password must NOT be a dictionary word spelled forwards or backwards.
  4. A password must NOT contain the user's name.
• Language. Select the user's language preference.

Applied Policies

Select the account policies you want to enable for the user. For more information, see Password Expiration and Retry Policies.

Home Device Group

Click Browse to select the device group(s) for which user can access and manage.

User Groups

Select the user group(s) for which user will access inherit user rights.

• domain-guests. This group is created if you attempt to map Active Directory groups before any WhatsUp Gold user groups have been created, this group is not given any user rights. Any user account with Manage Users can add user group rights to this group.
• Network Admins. This group should consist of network engineers who monitor outages and receive alerts. Users assigned to this group can access reports related to devices and alerts, but do not have access to system logs or real time performance reports. They can manage devices assigned to device groups, but cannot manage those groups. Users in this group can also view and manage personal dashboard views, but cannot share them with other users.
• Network Managers. Users assigned to this group manage larger, segmented networks. They can access all reports, configure monitors, actions, manage alert center thresholds, and manage devices and device groups as well as create and share dashboard views with other users.
• Report Viewers. This group is for users who only need to view device, group, inventory, and alert center reports. Users in this group can also view and manage personal dashboard views.
• Super Users. Users should be assigned to this group if they are responsible for configuring the WhatsUp Gold server. The user rights enabled for this group are equivalent to the WUG Administrators user group except for the Manage Users user right which is disabled.
• WUG Administrators. Users should be assigned to this group if they are responsible for administering and/or configuring the WhatsUp Gold server. The user rights enabled for this group are equivalent to the default admin user.

These user group options are available when creating or editing a user account and can be accessed and subsequently edited to better fit your organization directly from the User and Group Library.

Advanced User Rights Settings

Click Advance User Rights Settings to edit user rights beyond the inherited rights based on the assigned user groups. For more information, see Add New User and User Rights.

Note: Inherited user rights cannot be disabled unless the user is removed from the group.

See Also Users and User Groups Administering Users and User Groups Adding New User and User Rights Password Expiration and Retry Policies