Assigning Users To Groups

With groups configured the next step is creating users and assigning privileges so let us create a new user “Joe Bloggs” – a busy guy. For this we need to head back into “Control Panel”, then “User”.

From here we can setup a new user and basic information requirements are typically User name, Email Address, and Password, together with an optional description (I would recommend using this field as a “last updated” or similar note in order to track when user accounts have been updated).

We can also specify to send an email to the user (if an email address is provided), disable the account entirely, and we can also prevent the user changing their password.

NOTE: In these days of tight security we may wonder why we might disallow a user changing their password but one valid reason for this might be that we want to sit down with the user and show them through their account.

Next up, we assign the user to groups in much the same way we assigned privileges to groups. So, a list of groups is displayed and we tick which group or groups the user should be assigned to.

Once set we can also override particular group privileges as required by the individual user.

NOTE: We can also setup a user storage quota which is a limit set on the amount of storage space the user can utilise. It is unfortunate this is not set on a group basis too however this would be complex to manage if a user is assigned to multiple groups.

The next step is to assign privileges to particular applications on the shared storage device, in this case FTP, Network Backup, Surveillance Station, and others. Once setup the user is notified about the new account (if notification is specified) and the user can access the shared storage device.