Portal Users, Accounts, Sub-Accounts. Confusion

[apostolakisl]

If you are just one family all sharing the same portal account with one ISY, none of this matters.  But managing multiple ISY's with multiple user groups and not finding any good documentation and I got all twisted around.  Below are some of the pearls of wisdom I figured out with trial and error and tickets with UD.  I am not vouching that this is 100% correct, so if you think I made a mistake, please speak up.  Also, some of this may change.  Hopefully, the fact that a once used email address is forever used on that one setup short of opening a ticket to have UD staff delete it on the back-end will be changed.

Accounts and Sub-Accounts (refers to a primary portal account owner, not to be confused with a user)

1)      Require a portal username (email) and password

2)      ISY’s reside in accounts/subaccount, there is no limit to how many ISY’s can be in these accounts (or if there is, it is a lot)

3)      After adding an ISY to an account/subacount, permission must be approved at the ISY end using the ISY Admin Console under the configuration/portal tab.

4)      Any single ISY can belong to no more than 3 accounts/subaccount

5)      People with portal accounts have full permissions for any ISY in their account/subaccounts. 

6)      People with an Account will receive all UD correspondences related to any ISY in their account.  Ie, billing info

7)      Subaccounts have all the same functionality as the main account except subaccounts can’t have more subaccounts under them. 

8)    The same ISY can be in both an account and subaccount under the same account login and would use 2 of the 3 account memberships allotted any one ISY.  The purpose of having an ISY in more than one account/subaccount would be to create different user permission groups.  You might have some users who need access to 2 ISY’s, so you put those two in an account/subaccount and add those users to that, and then one of those ISY’s may have a different set of users who only get access to one of the two, so you need a separate subaccount with just the one ISY to which you add the users who just get access to that one ISY.

Users:

1)      Users are created from within (sub)accounts

2)      The user must confirm their email by responding to an email issued to that email address after it is created by the account holder.

3)      A user email can only be used once.  The same user email can not be in two different (sub)accounts.

4)      Similar to above, an email used for an account cannot be used again for some other account as a user.

5)      You can not delete a user (or account holder either) and add them as a user to a different (sub)account.  You need to make a ticket with UD and ask them to delete the user email from the system if you want to move them to a different (sub)account.  After they are deleted, you can invite them to be a user on a different (sub)account.

6)      A user does not necessarily have full permission.  Compared to an account holder who gets full permission on any ISY in their account.

[bmercier]

1 hour ago, apostolakisl said:

If you are just one family all sharing the same portal account with one ISY, none of this matters.  But managing multiple ISY's with multiple user groups and not finding any good documentation and I got all twisted around.  Below are some of the pearls of wisdom I figured out with trial and error and tickets with UD.  I am not vouching that this is 100% correct, so if you think I made a mistake, please speak up.  Also, some of this may change.  Hopefully, the fact that a once used email address is forever used on that one setup short of opening a ticket to have UD staff delete it on the back-end will be changed.

Accounts and Sub-Accounts (refers to a primary portal account owner, not to be confused with a user)

1)      Require a portal username (email) and password

2)      ISY’s reside in accounts/subaccount, there is no limit to how many ISY’s can be in these accounts (or if there is, it is a lot)

3)      After adding an ISY to an account/subacount, permission must be approved at the ISY end using the ISY Admin Console under the configuration/portal tab.

4)      Any single ISY can belong to no more than 3 accounts/subaccount

5)      People with portal accounts have full permissions for any ISY in their account/subaccounts. 

6)      People with an Account will receive all UD correspondences related to any ISY in their account.  Ie, billing info

7)      Subaccounts have all the same functionality as the main account except subaccounts can’t have more subaccounts under them. 

      The same ISY can be in both an account and subaccount under the same account login and would use 2 of the 3 account memberships allotted any one ISY.  The purpose of having an ISY in more than one account/subaccount would be to create different user permission groups.  You might have some users who need access to 2 ISY’s, so you put those two in an account/subaccount and add those users to that, and then one of those ISY’s may have a different set of users who only get access to one of the two, so you need a separate subaccount with just the one ISY to which you add the users who just get access to that one ISY.

Users:

1)      Users are created from within (sub)accounts

2)      The user must confirm their email by responding to an email issued to that email address after it is created by the account holder.

3)      A user email can only be used once.  The same user email can not be in two different (sub)accounts.

4)      Similar to above, an email used for an account cannot be used again for some other account as a user.

5)      You can not delete a user (or account holder either) and add them as a user to a different (sub)account.  You need to make a ticket with UD and ask them to delete the user email from the system if you want to move them to a different (sub)account.  After they are deleted, you can invite them to be a user on a different (sub)account.

6)      A user does not necessarily have full permission.  Compared to an account holder who gets full permission on any ISY in their account.

> 4)      Any single ISY can belong to no more than 3 accounts/subaccount

This is a limitation of the Admin Console, not portal. If using eisy-ui to approve/reject accounts, there is no limit.

The limit on Admin Console is higher than 3, probably 5 if memory serves well.

> 5)      You can not delete a user (or account holder either) and add them as a user to a different (sub)account.  You need to make a ticket with UD and ask them to delete the user email from the system if you want to move them to a different (sub)account.  After they are deleted, you can invite them to be a user on a different (sub)account.

Actually you can delete a user, as long as the user is an account admin. If there is only one user left in an account, and he is not an account admin, then you are stuck. 

If the user is in a subaccount of yours, then you can delete the user and the subaccout.

 

 

[apostolakisl]

22 minutes ago, bmercier said:

> 4)      Any single ISY can belong to no more than 3 accounts/subaccount

This is a limitation of the Admin Console, not portal. If using eisy-ui to approve/reject accounts, there is no limit.

The limit on Admin Console is higher than 3, probably 5 if memory serves well.

> 5)      You can not delete a user (or account holder either) and add them as a user to a different (sub)account.  You need to make a ticket with UD and ask them to delete the user email from the system if you want to move them to a different (sub)account.  After they are deleted, you can invite them to be a user on a different (sub)account.

Actually you can delete a user, as long as the user is an account admin. If there is only one user left in an account, and he is not an account admin, then you are stuck. 

If the user is in a subaccount of yours, then you can delete the user and the subaccout.

 

 

Interesting, I assumed the limit on accounts was ISY, but it is the Java structure.  I hit that limit many years ago and thought it was 3, is it possible that number changed from what it might have been 8 or 10 years ago?

I'm still a bit vague on deleting users and having that email available for re-use.  By saying "if they were an admin" you mean that you checked the admin box when adding them as a user initially?  In that case, they are deletable?  But if you didn't check that box, then deleting them doesn't free up the email for new use?  Do you have to delete the entire account/subaccount to clear the email for new use or just delete the user only?

Obviously sending in a ticket and having you delete it will always get this taken care of, but it would be nice if us customers could handle it ourselves.  

[bmercier]

31 minutes ago, apostolakisl said:

I'm still a bit vague on deleting users and having that email available for re-use.  By saying "if they were an admin" you mean that you checked the admin box when adding them as a user initially?  In that case, they are deletable?  But if you didn't check that box, then deleting them doesn't free up the email for new use?  Do you have to delete the entire account/subaccount to clear the email for new use or just delete the user only?

The "account admin" checkbox can be checked/unchecked at will by an account admin. Except that if you uncheck yourself and that is the last account admin in the account, you will be locked out. If you are locked out, then you can no longer delete it. 

If deleted, then it is available for reuse.

> Do you have to delete the entire account/subaccount to clear the email for new use or just delete the user only?

Only the email needs to be deleted.

[apostolakisl]

42 minutes ago, bmercier said:

The "account admin" checkbox can be checked/unchecked at will by an account admin. Except that if you uncheck yourself and that is the last account admin in the account, you will be locked out. If you are locked out, then you can no longer delete it. 

If deleted, then it is available for reuse.

> Do you have to delete the entire account/subaccount to clear the email for new use or just delete the user only?

Only the email needs to be deleted.

I'm a bit turned around on this.  For example, I have my portal setup with 2 ISY's and 2 subaccounts.  The main account has both ISYs, and the two subaccounts each have one.  My email (the same email as the portal account) is listed as a user under the main account (with admin rights, the only user anywhere with that setting), perhaps that was put there by default?  I don't remember if I did that manually or not, it was a long time ago.  The one subaccount has a bunch of users, the other, at least right now only has one.  But none of those users are admins.

I have not tried to delete any of those people because I don't want to go through the trouble of putting them back in, but it sounds like you are saying I would be locked out of the sub accounts because there is no admin on either?  But if I check "admin" box, I can make any of those people admins and then I can uncheck and it goes away.

Perhaps the thing you are saying is there needs to be at least one admin under the main account since the main account passes privileges to the subaccounts?  The two sub-accounts never had admin users, I only just now briefly gave one user admin rights and then took away again.

Edited yesterday at 07:15 PM by apostolakisl