System Administration - Edit User Accounts and User Groups

This section shows how user accounts can be managed. For a general introduction see section

Note: Only for a PRTG Administrator User all settings are visible. If you're logged in as another user, you  may not see all options described in this manual.

Creating New Users

For each new user the administrator user must specify a login name and an email address. New users can be created by selecting "Setup | User Accounts" from the main menu and clicking on "Add new user". Please see next section "User Account Settings" for details about the options.

Tip: If you want to control the rights of each user individually, you must create a user group for each user. This can be automated by choosing "Create new user group for this user" from the "Primary Group" drop-down when creating a new user account. This will create a new user and a new user group with the same name. In turn, you can use this user group to control the user's rights individually.

User Account Settings

Each user account has a number of settings that can be changed by the user (choose "Setup | My Account" from the web interface's main menu) or by the administrator (choose "Setup | User Accounts" from the web interface's main menu). These settings are:

• User Account: Enter user specific data, such as a Login Name, a Username for display purposes, Email Address, Timezone, Date Format and Password. The Hash value cannot be changed. It can be used for identification in certain API calls.
• Auto Refresh and Alerting: PRTG automatically refreshes the content in your browser. Here you can choose between different refresh methods, you can disable the refreshing and you can specify the refresh time (30 seconds recommended). You can also specify which Pop-up Alerts are shown and where an Audible Alarm should be played if there are alarm messages.
• Web Interface: You can specify the URL of the Homepage that is shown after login and when clicking on the Home button. You can also choose a Chart Rendering method (whether or not to use the more interactive Flash Graphs) and specify a Flash Graph Delay to improve browser performance in case of using Flash Graphs.
• Auto-folding: In order to provide you with a speedy user experience, PRTG tries to keep the page size for the pages with the sensor tree small by automatically "folding" groups and devices with many items. The two settings "Max. Groups/Devices per Group" and "Max. Sensors per Device" control how many groups/devices or how many sensors are shown at max before the automatic reduction is performed. Recommended values are 10 - 30 for both settings. If you do not want to see any individual sensors in the tree view enter a zero for "Max. Sensors per Device".

Account Control (only PRTG Administrator Users can edit settings here):

• Account Type: Choose between "Read/Write User" or "Read Only User". Read Only User can only view objects and values and cannot edit any configuration settings. All editing functions are disabled and hidden in the user interface. Of course, this user can only see objects that are enabled for this user. A Read/Write User can also edit every object that is write enabled for this user.
• Primary Group: Each user is mandatorily member of a "Primary Group". User access rights for objects and settings are controlled on group level.
• Status: The administrator can set a user to Inactive, meaning the user can not log on.

Creating New User Groups

This is for Administrator Users only. To create a new user group, select "Setup | User Groups" from the main menu and click on "Add new user group". See next section "User Group Settings" for details about the options.

User Group Settings

This is for Administrator Users only. To edit a user group's settings, select "Setup | User Groups" from the main menu and select a group. You have these options:

• User Group Settings: Here, you can enter the name of the group.
• User List: Select which users from the user list should be member of this group. Please note: Every user already is member of a primary group by default. Here you can add all marked users to the current group additionally. In the object settings, access rights are defined on group level only (not on user level).
• Primary Users: Shows a list of all users that have assigned the current group as Primary Group.