Users

A user is an account in Power Monitoring Expert (PME) that provides access to the system. A user has a username, which must be unique, and a password. You use the username and password to log into PME.

PME supports 3 different types of users - standard user, Windows user, and Windows group.

The following table shows the characteristics of each user type:

User Type	Characteristics
Standard user	This is a PME native user account. The username, password, and details are defined in the PME User Manager. Note: The email addresses defined for a user can be used for report subscriptions.
Windows user	This is an account from an external Windows system. The username, password, and details are defined through the Windows Active Directory or local Windows operating system.
Windows group	This is a group of accounts from an external Windows system. The username, password, and details are defined through the Windows Active Directory or local Windows operating system.

User Type

Characteristics

Standard user

This is a PME native user account. The username, password, and details are defined in the PME User Manager.

Note: The email addresses defined for a user can be used for report subscriptions.

Windows user

This is an account from an external Windows system. The username, password, and details are defined through the Windows Active Directory or local Windows operating system.

Windows group

This is a group of accounts from an external Windows system. The username, password, and details are defined through the Windows Active Directory or local Windows operating system.

Each user has an access level, which is set in User Manager. The access level determines which actions the user is allowed to take in PME.

There are 5 different access levels. The highest level is Supervisor, the lowest level is Observer. All Windows users that are a member of a Windows group in PME have the same access level as the one set for the Windows group. For details on the permissions granted by the different access levels see Default User Access Level Privileges.

Each user is a member of at least one user group. The user group determines which sources and applications the user can access. By default, users are assigned to the Global user group which has access to all sources and applications in the system. See User groups for details on how to configure groups and assign users to groups.

Rules

The following rule applies to users in PME:

A Windows user that is a member of multiple Windows groups with different access levels in PME, gets the highest access level of any of the groups.

Example:

Windows user BillG is a member of Windows group A with observer access level in PME.
Windows user BillG is also a member of Windows group B with operator access level in PME.
As a result, BillG has operator access level in PME.

Limitations

The following limitations exist for standard PME users:

Usernames must be unique in PME.
Usernames cannot contain any of the following characters: whitespace character, < > : " / \ | ? * , ; @ # % ' ^ & ( ) ! = + - ~ . $
Usernames and passwords must be between 1-50 characters long.
Email addresses are not checked for the correct format. Any leading or trailing whitespace characters are removed.
Multiple email addresses must be separated by a ; (semicolon).
First name, last name, and organization must be between 0-50 characters long. Any leading or trailing whitespace characters are removed.

The following limitations exist for all PME users:

A user cannot change its own access level.
A user cannot delete its own account.