App Manager - The User Category

In this context, a User refers to a person who uses a standard Digitise Apps Client, a pre-configured Digitise Apps Client or a Standalone App to run one or more Digitise apps on a mobile device.

If you configure access rights for any of your Digitise apps on the App Server, users will be prompted to log in when running a Digitise Apps Client by supplying a username and password. Login details are cached locally on the device and, when a user logs in, the login details are checked against the local store. If the credentials provided don't match and a network connection is available, the Digitise Apps Client will attempt to verify the user with the App Server. Passwords are stored in the cache in an encrypted format.

On Standalone Apps you can choose whether users need to log in or not when you build the app. If you want to restrict access to your Digitise apps you will need to specify that user login is required, otherwise users will automatically be logged in as an Anonymous user.

There are four types of user:

Anonymous User - A built-in username (i.e. "anonymous") that is used where the actual identity of the user is of no concern. No password is required. There is only one Anonymous User registered, but multiple users can access an app using this one user.
Digitise Apps User - A proprietary Digitise Apps user account assigned a user name and password of your choice. Digitise Apps Users must be registered in the App Server Configuration Database from the User Category within App Manager. Please note that a Digitise Apps Username should not include a '\' as this is used to distinguish Windows User names. Passwords are stored using a 256-bit hashing encryption algorithm. Identified within App Manager as a User.
Windows User - An Active Directory user imported from a local Windows Domain. Note that this type of user is not added to the database in the same way as a Digitise Apps User; they are automatically added either when a user logs into the App Server for the first time using Windows authentication, when referenced from an Access Control list or added to a Digitise Apps User Group. An Active Directory user can be identified by the fact that they have a two-part name: <domain>\<username> and are referred to within App Manager as an AdUser.
OAuth User - A user who will sign in to a Digitise app using Google OAuth. OAuth Users must be registered in the App Server Configuration Database from the User Category within App Manager. An OAuth User is identified by their Google Gmail address. For more information about OAuth Users see: Log In Using Google OAuth Authentication.

As well as verifying identity, the username can be used by the App Server to determine which apps that user has access to – apps can be configured to allow or deny access to specific users within the Application category of App Manager. You can also restrict access to apps on a device basis or a mixture of both user and device.

Selecting the User category button, in the lower panel of the App Manager's left-hand pane, provides access to settings and auditing of registered users and allows you to add new users.

If you select Users at the top of the tree view in the left-hand pane, the Properties and Audit tabs will display settings and auditing for ALL users. Alternatively, you can select an individual user in the left-hand pane to switch the tabs to display the Properties and audit logs for the selected user only.

The Properties Tab

The Properties tab displays different information depending upon whether you are looking at all users or a particular one.

For all users the right-hand pane displays a list of all your registered users, together with information about each user. Beneath the list the Add… and Remove buttons allow you to add and remove users from the list.

You can also display the Properties for an individual user from the All Users Properties by selecting the relevant user from the list of users and then choosing the Properties button.

For a specific user, the right-hand pane displays the Properties for that user only.

Denying Access to Users and Automatically Deleting Digitise apps

The Security Action Property allows you to deny access to an individual user and also to automatically delete your Digitise apps from their device.

This Property is located within the Properties for each individual user and has the following possible values:

None

Does nothing.

Purge Applications

The next time this user connects, a message will be sent to the device they are using to delete all its Digitise apps and associated data.

Purge Applications and Digitise Apps Install

On currently supported devices, this setting is equivalent to Purge Applications and will only delete the Digitise apps and data.

Deny Device Access to Server

Block access to the server for this user, but nothing will be deleted from their device.

Changes to this option will be downloaded to the Digitise Apps Client the next time the Client connects to the App Server to refresh the Applications list or to synchronise any data.

This option denies complete access to the device and is different to the Application access rights which allow you to specify which users or devices can run a particular version of a named app. You can also block access to the App Server for individual devices rather than users, if required.

For a full list and description of all the User Properties, see The App Manager User Properties.