Overview of User Administration

AnterraBI™ offers robust and flexible user security.  There are 2 main concepts, individual user and group user.

Individual User Setup 

1. Each user is granted access to Anterra Modules
   
2. Each user is “data trimmed” for each module (i.e. a user can see All Project Managers or is trimmed to specific Project Managers) 
   
3. Each user is assigned to one or more User Groups
   

User Group Setup 

User Groups are granted roles to see BI components.  Roles are assigned to every report, grid, widget, and dashboard in Anterra.   Granting a user group access to a role results in access to all components with that role.  For example, the Finance > Cash role sees the Cash Dashboard, the Cash Trend grid, the Cash Balance Widget, and the Cash Trend Widget all of which have the Finance > Cash role.

To summarize user security:

Users see BI components with roles that are assigned to the user groups they belong to.  All BI components they see are data trimmed to the entities they have permission to see. 

Here’s an example of setting up a construction division manager, you set up the highlighted items:

Jane Smith would see the following Finance BI components based on roles assigned to the “Division Manager” User Group:  Finance menu items and dashboard widgets related to income, AR, and AP.   She would not see items that her groups do not have access to like Finance – Cash or Finance – Balance Sheet. 

Jane would also see the following BI components based on roles assigned to the “All Construction Access” User Group:  All construction components – Margin, Cost, Contracts, Commitments, Labor, etc.

For Real Estate, she would see all real estate BI components.

Data Trimming – Jane is trimmed for Finance and Construction to the Texas Division Consolidation Group – this is a set of GL prefixes.  For Finance the user would only see Texas Division Income statements, Income-based Widgets, and Texas Division AR and AP.  For Construction, she is trimmed to jobs belonging to the Texas Division.  She would not see jobs belonging to any other division.  In real estate her BI components would only show properties in the Retail Portfolio, she would not see any information about properties in any other portfolio.

After setting up a user you can impersonate them to see the access you have granted them, see User Setup.

How to Setup Security in Anterra - Follow steps in order

Step 1:  Setup User Groups

User groups allow you to centrally control the access you grant to end-users.  Anterra will set up the initial user groups for you – typical user group names that describe the roles you assign are:

• All Construction Access
  
• All Finance Access
  
• All Service Management Access
  
• All Real Estate Access
  
• Income Statements
  
• GL Account Mapping
  
• Shared Dashboards
  
• Shared Persisted Grids
  

There is no limit to the number of groups you can set up.  By setting up groups that describe the roles you grant you can easily assign users to the right groups.  You can set up very specific groups like Construction AR if you want to give access to one area of BI to certain individuals.

Setting up Groups:  

Menu Admin > Group Administration > User Group Administration

The User Group Admin Grid appears:

Add a User Group : Click on the + Add Group button, enter the name of the group and a description

Delete a User Group:   Click on the trash can icon to the left of the user group name.  We hold “Trash” for 90 days in case you want to restore the group, there is a “View Trash” button at the top of the screen to view and recover deleted items if necessary.

Edit a User Group:  Click on the pencil/notepad icon  to edit the group’s name or detailed notes

Assignees Column : The column on the right side shows you the number of users assigned to each group

Step 2:  User Group Role Assignments

Every report, dashboard, grid, and widget in Anterra has an assigned role.  Assigning roles to user groups and then users to those groups allow users to access reports/dashboards and grids in Anterra.   Menu items are not visible to users without belonging to a group that has that menu item’s role and having access to that menu item’s module in the User setup.  You can see the roles of each menu item in our Menu Administration help topic.

Here’s another diagram showing you can assign different roles to specific groups. 

Notice that the “Create Shared Dashboards” group is only assigned one role.  This is a specific group that only has one purpose, to create companywide shared dashboards.

To setup role assignments for groups use the Group / Role Assignment Menu:

Assign Roles to Group:  Click on the button to the left of the group name to assign roles.  Let’s look at the Shared Dashboard Group first – it only has one role attached:

Roles are in a hierarchy – in this case, you see that under Widgets we have Use Widget, Widget Builder, and Create Shared Dashboards.  We could assign all widget roles to this group by selecting the top “Widget” role and clicking on the right arrow button in the center.  In this case, we wanted a small group of people to be able to create shared dashboards so we are setting up a unique group.  We will set up “Use Widgets” on larger functional groups.

Let’s look at the “All Construction” Group next:

As you can see you have a lot of flexibility in creating groups and assigning roles to them.   If you are looking to refine your security or simply review how your groups are set up please email support@anterratech.com and the first available support tech will get back with you.  They will help you with your specific security needs.

Step 3:  User Setup

Users are set up under the User Administration menu item:

Let’s set up a user from scratch – here’s the information we need for user setup:

Name: Jane Smith, email address  jsmith@anterratech.com, Job Title - IT Manager, Mobile Number - 123-456-7890

Modules: Finance, Construction, Real Estate

Data Trimming:

Finance:  trim to 2 consolidation groups:  Anterra Construction and Anterra Electric

Construction: Trim to Anterra Construction and Anterra Electric, Trim to 2 Project Managers:  John Laurent and Michael Perkins

Real Estate: Trim to the Retail Portfolio

User Groups:  All Construction, All Finance, Create Shared Dashboards

1. Setup the user and Modules
   

   Click on the  Edit User/ Assign Modules button -  – you will be entering data into these fields: 

The expiry date ends access for the user on the date entered into this field.  Click on the Save & Go to Data Trimming.

2. Set up Data Trimming
   

Accessed by the “Save and Go to Data Trimming” Button on User Setup or by the funnel icon on the User Administration grid.  Here’s how data trimming will look when we are done, notice that for Construction we have trimmed Jane to multiple consolidation groups and multiple project managers: 

Construction and Finance Consolidation Groups:

When you first open data for a new user each area is set to “All” – if you want to trim someone to one or more items (i.e. consolidation groups or PM’s) click on the Edit button to the left of the entity you want to trim, the date trimming window will open:

Select the item you want and click save.  

To add another permission click on the +Add Permission button on the data trimming window:

Add as many permissions as you need by permission type.  When you are finished you will be back at the User Administration Window.

3. Assign the User to Group(s)
   

From the user administration grid click on the group icon for Jane Smith:

The User Group Assignment window opens and you can assign Jane to the 3 groups below, when you are finished you would click on the “Save and Go to User Admin” Button at the top right of the screen:

You are done setup!  You can now check the new user’s setup by impersonating her to see that you have set them up the way you want:

4. Impersonate the new user to check the setup
   

Click on the Impersonate icon to the left of Jane’s user name:

You are now logged in as Jane as shown in the top right – you now see her name instead of yours as the logged-in user.

Running the margin gain erosion grid you will see she is trimmed to 2 companies and 2 Project Managers:

You can check all of your security setups for a user when you impersonate them.  When you are finished checking setup you log out as Jane and go back to your user by clicking on the user name:

5. Send the user an email to activate their account:
   

Go to user admin (Admin – User Admin – User Administration) and you will see that the email icon is Red for Jane Smith – she has not been sent an email yet to activate her account.  Click on the email icon to send her an email that will ask her to establish a password:

After you click on the email icon the email is sent.  

IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT THE EMAIL:

1. The link sent to the user is good for 8 hours, if the user does not activate their account within 8 hours you will need to send another email
   
2. You will not be able to see or change the user’s password, it is stored in an encrypted format so no one but the user knows it.  If the user forgets their password they can reset it from the login page:
   

Trouble Shooting User Setup

If a user does not see what you expect them to see you should troubleshoot in the following order:

1. Ensure that the user has been given access to the module(s) you want them to see.  Check the User setup icon to the left of the User’s name under User Administration.
   
2. Check the user’s data trimming to see that they have access to the right Consolidation Groups, Project Managers, Portfolios, etc by module. Check the User Data Trimming icon to the left of the User’s name under User Administration.
   
3. Check that the user is assigned to groups. Check the Group Icon to the left of the User’s name in User Administration. 
   
4. Check the roles assigned to the groups the user belongs to, at least one group must have a role to see a BI component you want the user to see.  
   

If you are unable to resolve a security setup question please email support@anterratech.com for assistance.

Managing User Group Assignments for all Users

Menu Admin > Assignments > User / Group Assignments

You can manage group assignments for all users from this screen:

Conclusion

User and security administration in Anterra is powerful and effective, you can refine security the way you need to run your business.  If you have security questions please contact the Anterra Support Team .