Accounts and privileges 101

[Oldsneekers]

These a basic questions as I'm used to simple FM 5 password management. I plan on having 4 types of privilege sets, as there are several of each of 4 types of employees and each type of employee has his or her privilege set.

Account name: This is automatically filled in with the "terminal" name. Is it to function like a log in name connected to the user or to employee type? My suspicion is that it should function as a log in name, distinct for each employee, even though some may share privilege sets. (It is possible that different employees may use the same terminal at different times.)

Managing extended privileges: the system will be over a network so I guess this needs to be checked for all, is this right?

Disconnect user from FM server when idle: where is the idle time specified, I certainly don't want to disconned for a few min. of silence.

What is the significance of "changing the order in which accounts are authenticated"? This is part of the queery I get when I put the list of accounts in a different order.

Thanks for all help, past and future.

[Fenton]

Yes, each person should have their own Account, but several people can share the same Privilege Set. The Account name will by default be the User Name, which can be set in the FileMaker preference for that copy of the app; but that's not much use if several people use the same machine.

In that case you should, at the very least, put a Relogin button (script step) button, so they can switch people. Or just have them close all the files, or Quit FileMaker.

Only high-level accounts might need to manage "extended privileges." Everyone should have the FileMaker network extended privilege turned on. But the other ones are for things like FileMaker Mobile, ODBC, web publishing, etc.. Not the kind of thing you want everyone turning on and off at will.

The disconnect time is set in the Server Admin. I don't quite remember what the default is, maybe 30 min? I have the Server Advanced developement-only version you can get with FileMaker Developer, which only I use. So I've bumped my disconnect up to 2 hours.

It's less critical now, because you can do most things even while everyone is still connected. But for security reasons, and for remote developement (say in the evening, from your home) you don't want some yo-yo leaving the files open all night.

If you give uses an "opener" file on their desktop they can quickly log in again.

There is some documentation somewhere about the use of account order, but I can't remember where, nor exactly what the uses were. I can't really see how it pertains to systems where each person has at least 1 unique account; but there are uses, somewhere :-?

Account creation and deletion is scriptable now. Though that's less critical if you have a 1-file system.

[Steverino]

I just upgraded to FM7, and I still am using multiple related files -- and it doesn't seem that logging in with one user name and password will open multiple files (as it worked in 6). Is there anything to do so that I don't have to enter a user name and password with every file that opens? (There are too many!!) I can't remove the passwords altogether.

[Ender]

FileMaker 7 DOES attempt to open target files with the same account and password as the calling file. If this is not working for you, then perhaps your accounts in the calling file don't have the same name or password as the accounts in the target files.

[Steverino]

But they do!

It's very frustrating! (Part of the problem might have been that my system name was not the same as the user name in the files. Still, I have to enter the password for fewer files, but some still pop up and require the password.)

[Ender]

Try turning off the automatic login option in the File Options.

[Oldsneekers]

Thanks for all the input and related discussion. Will plow onwords, apply and learn.

(It's never so bad that it couldn't get worse.")