Legacy Documentation for Statseeker version 5.5.4

Index


Overview

Statseeker user accounts provide access to the Statseeker web interface and the Statseeker RESTful API. A Statseeker installation comes with a single admin user account which is configured during the installation process (see Installation Guide for details). Initially, the admin account is the only account that will have access to the Statseeker Administration Tool which is used to configure and manage your Statseeker installation. You can assign additional Statseeker user accounts the Admin role to allow other accounts this same functionality.

Additional Statseeker user accounts can be created, and these accounts can be tailored to a purpose by associating the user account with groups. Grouping allows you to control the visibility of, and access to, elements of your network and specific functionality within Statseeker, for more information on this see Users and Grouping.

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Default Settings

The default settings for user access to dashboards, and dashboard permissions can be managed in the Admin Tool:

  • Select Admin Tool > Reporting / Scheduling > Console Options

Global Settings - default settings applied to all Statseeker user accounts

  • Enable Dashboards - toggle Dashboards tab availability
  • Set Dashboards User Role (non-admin) - applies to non-admin accounts, admin users always have edit permission
  • Enable Custom Reporting Console - toggle Reporting tab availability
  • Default Tab - set the default tab when accessing the Statseeker server via the web GUI
  • NIM Console Default - set the default Console tab layout (Removed in Statseeker v5.5.3)

The User Overrides section allows you to configure user-specific overrides to each of the global settings.

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Creating New Users

Note: if the new user is simply a variation on an existing user (e.g. same configuration but different username/email), you can speed up the process:

  • Select the existing User and click Copy
  • Update the configuration and click Add User

To create a new Statseeker user account:

  • Select Administration Tool > User Profile/Grouping > Add / Edit Users
  • Enter a username into the text field and click Add
  • Specify an email address for the account
  • Optionally, flag the user as Is Admin to provide the account the same rights and access as the default admin account

Field Description
Is Admin Set the flag to provide the account the same rights and access as the default admin account

Note: the Is Admin role is not sufficient to update the server root user account password from within the Admin Tool, this can only be done by the admin user.
Email Email address used when Statseeker emails reports\alerts to the Statseeker user
API Access Level of API access to be granted to the user account
Authentication Method

- This field is only visible when the server has been set to utilize LDAP, Radius or SAML authentication -

  • File - authenticated directly with the Statseeker server
  • LDAP - use your existing Active Directory/LDAP authentication to manage access to Statseeker
  • RADIUS - use your existing RADIUS server to manage access to Statseeker
  • SAML - pass user authentication off to a 3rd party SSO implementation
Note: for details on configuring the various user authentication methods, see User Authentication.
Password

- This field is only visible when the user account has been set to utilize FILE authentication -

The password required for the user account to access the web interface. This password can be updated by the user after their initial login.

Timezone The default timezone used by reports when viewed by the user
Top N The default number of rows returned by reports for that user (overridden by settings in Custom Reports)
Authentication TTL Override the default duration (seconds) of the authentication token 'time-to-live' period, see Authentication Token Settings for details
Authentication Refresh Override the default duration (seconds) of the authentication token refresh period, see Authentication Token Settings for details
Report Row Spacing Specify the amount of vertical whitespace used when presenting tabular reports

  • Standard - default layout
  • Compact - reduce vertical whitespace to a minimum to present more data rows in a given view
Export Date Format Date format to be used when exporting report data as *.csv
Note: The admin account comes with access to the All Groups group, giving the account visibility of all entities and groups on your Statseeker server. New accounts assigned the Admin role do not have default access to any entity or group. See Users and Grouping for details on assigning user accounts visibility to entities and groups. By being selective to which elements of your network an account has visibility, you can create accounts with full Admin privileges to a subset of your network.
  • Set the level of API Access for the account
Note: the Authentication Method field is only visible if Statseeker has been configured to use either LDAP or RADIUS authentication, otherwise all accounts are considered to be using basic file authentication and the field is hidden. For more information see User Authentication.
  • Specify an authentication method
  • If the account is configured to use File authentication, then the Password field will be displayed, enter a password for the account
  • Set the required Time Zone for the account, this will be used when displaying reports to the user within Statseeker
  • Set the default Top N for the user
  • Set the default Export Date Format for the user
  • Click Add User

The user account has been saved and can be used immediately.

Note: by default, a new user account has no visibility of your network via Statseeker. To allow the user to use Statseeker to view data collected from your network you need to associate the user account with one or more groups. See Users and Grouping for more information.

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Editing Users and Updating Preferences

A user with the Admin Role can edit any user account from the Administration Tool, and all users can edit their own account from the main navigator.

Note: non-Admin users can edit their own basic account details (email, password, reporting defaults, etc.), but cannot assign themselves the admin role, alter their API access, or authentication settings.

Update\Edit Current User
  • Select User Configuration from the main navigator

  • Update settings as required and click Save User

Update\Edit Any User
  • Select Administration Tool > User Profile/Grouping > Add / Edit Users
  • Select the user from the list and click Edit
Note: the user-list search field is case-insensitive RegEx enabled.

  • Make the required changes and click Save User

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Log Out or Switch the Current User

To log out or switch the current user:

  • Select Log Out from the main navigator


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Deleting A User

To delete an existing user account:

  • Select Administration Tool > User Profile/Grouping > Add / Edit Users
  • Select the user from the list and click Delete
  • You will be prompted to confirm this action, click OK to delete the user account

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Managing User Access & Permissions with Grouping

By default, a new Statseeker user account has no visibility of your network via Statseeker. To allow the user to use Statseeker, and view data collected from your network, you need to associate the user account with one or more groups. A group may be a subset of all devices on your network, or a group of other users or reports.

Reports can be built to be targeted at a specific device or group of devices or they can be configured to be network-wide reports. If a Statseeker user only has visibility to a subset of your network, viewing a network-wide report will instead show the report as if it was configured to target the subnet that they have responsibility for.

Full Network Access Requires 'All Groups'

Statseeker has a super-group called 'All Groups' which contains all entities that Statseeker is monitoring. The default admin user account has permission to access this 'All Groups' entity, granting the account access to all Statseeker data. To create other Admin-level accounts:

  • Assign the account the Is Admin role
  • Assign permission to access 'All Groups'

Example:

Our new user, Theodore, logs into the Statseeker server but has no visibility of any device or associated report.

Theodore's user account needs to be associated with both devices and reports. We already have a group, London Offices, which contains the devices in the location that Theodore will be administering, but we need to also give Theodore access to reports. We could simply add reports to the London Offices group and give Theodore access to that group, but instead we are going to create a new group specifically for reports and all new network engineer accounts can be assigned that group when they join the organization.

We:

  • Select Administration Tool > User Profile/Grouping > Add / Edit Groups
  • Click Add and enter the group name Engineer Reports in the text field and click Ok

The group will be created and automatically selected, ready for population.

  • Set the entity type to Report
  • Assign a selection of reports to the group

  • Click the Entity\Group toggle ()
  • Set entity type to Users
  • Select Theodore from the list of users
  • Select both the London Offices and Engineer Reports groups from the list and click to add the groups to the Include column

Theodore refreshes his browser and can now see the devices and reports contained within the two groups that his user account has been associated with.


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