The Auto Add Customer feature gives customers access
to the system automatically and without the administrator creating or
pre-loading account information. A default Workspace, additional Workspace
membership, and the customer role type can be specified for new users
added automatically. This feature is useful if you have a large
employee customer or external customer user base that needs access to
FootPrints and you want them to have individual IDs and passwords.
There are two different cases for the Auto Add Customers
feature, based on the authentication method for the system:
FootPrints
Authentication—Customers
create their own accounts and passwords like they do on public sites like
Yahoo and Hotmail.
Windows, LDAP or UNIX password Authentication—Customers access
FootPrints with their network
IDs and passwords.
If unique passwords are not necessary, for example, on
an internal network where security is not a big issue, a single shared
ID and password can be created for the entire customer base. Those
customers enter a unique key, such as Email
address, when they log in, which identifies the individual customer
and links to the customer's Address Book contact information. A
special login page can be created for these users (group.html).
If this
method is preferred, then the Auto Add Customer feature should not be
enabled.
NOTE
Auto-added customers are not displayed in the Select Customer pop-up window from the Add Customer or Edit Customer pages because of the processing overhead involved in sites that have thousands of auto-added customers.
FootPrints Authentication
If FootPrints password authentication is being
used, the Auto Add Customer feature, if enabled, adds a New
User Signup link to the FootPrints login screen. Users
create their own account IDs and passwords. In addition, users can
fill in their contact information when they first create an account.
The fields presented on the sign-up screen are based on the fields in
the Address Book.
NOTE
Password complexity rulesRules that govern the mandatory characteristics of passwords for FootPrints authentication. Rules are optionally set by the System Administrator. Rules can be configured to govern the length of a password (minimum and maximum number of characters), whether letters and/or numbers and/or punctuation characters are required, and case sensitivity. are displayed on the sign-up page to assist customers.
There are five steps
to enabling this feature:
Select
“Yes” to enable—This
enabled the Auto Add feature. A New
Users: Sign Up Here link
is added to the FootPrints login screen.
NOTE
When the Auto-Added Customers feature is enabled,
resaving the feature configuration and selecting a different role will cause all
existing Auto-Added Customers to be changed to the new role.
Select
the Default workspace—This
is the Workspace that auto-added customers are brought into when they log
into FootPrints. This Address Book must be enabled on this
Workspace.
Select
additional workspaces (optional)—You
can optionally add these users to other Workspaces. Only Workspaces
that share the Address Book and the same primary key with the selected
default Workspace are available. Highlight the Workspaces with your
mouse.
Select
the user role—This option appears after enabling Auto Add
and clicking GO.
This is the user permission level auto-added customers receive.
A different role can be specified for each Workspace to which users belong.
Built-in
roles include: Read KB/Requests, Read/Submit, and Customer Edit (only
if the Customer Edit license is enabled). Custom roles are also available.
All auto-added users have unique customer accounts of the role chosen
here. Refer to Roles for more information.
Password
Retrieval (optional)—Enable the Customer Forgot Password feature (below) for auto-added customers (this is where "hint questions" are administered).
Windows, LDAP or UNIX Authentication
If an external authentication method is enabled for the
system, the Auto Add Customer feature allows employee and/or external
customers to use their network user IDs and passwords to access FootPrints.
When they click the link to Sign
Up Here, customers are prompted to enter a network ID and password,
and a customer account is automatically created for them in FootPrints using the properties selected
on the Auto Add Customer setup screen. Alternatively,
customers can enter their network IDs and passwords on the login page
(for example, the first time they click a link in an email notification
from FootPrints) and a new account
is created. Most
of the setup options are the same as those enumerated above for FootPrints
authentication, with a few important exceptions:
The Password Retrieval
option is not available if an external authentication method is used.
If LDAP authentication
is used, multiple custom profiles can be created for groups of customers
based on an LDAP attribute (such as Organizational Unit). More information
on this feature can be found below.
Important Notes Regarding Auto Add Customer Feature (PLEASE
READ!!)
The account IDs that
auto-added customers create are of the format of the primary key for the
Address Book associated with the Workspace(s) selected above. This
is what enables the user's account to link to contact information.
We strongly recommend using the User
ID field. If this field does not exist in the Address Book,
you should make a single-line character Address Book User
ID or Customer
ID field. In addition, that field must be selected as the
primary key in the Address Book on the Address
Book Field Maintenance page.
Auto-added Customers
are linked to their contact information in the Address Book by their User
IDs, which is the same as the primary key. Details of how this works
for different Address Book and authentication method options are in the
section below entitled Sign Up Form.
Once a Workspace is
designated to allow access to auto-added customers, the primary key cannot
be changed. If
it is necessary to change the primary key for a Workspace, that Workspace
must be de-selected from the Auto
Add Customers setup page first.
If a specific customer
account is edited on the Edit
Customers Workspace Administration page, and the customer was originally
auto-added, the customer is no longer an auto-added customer. Any
changed made on the Auto
Add Customers setup page (default Workspace, user type, etc.) no
longer apply to this user.
Address Book Contact Information
In addition to user ID and password, customers typically
have contact information that must be populated in the Address Book. Contact
information can be entered into FootPrints for auto-added users
in a variety of ways:
Users
can enter their own contact information the first time they sign up (Auto
Add with FootPrints Authentication).
The Address Book
data can be imported using the Address Book import function. This
is described in the chapter on Address Book
Administration. The user IDs must match the primary key data
for the contacts in the Address Book. For example, if Email
address is the primary key, the user ID must also be the user’s
email address. This method is available for the Auto Add Customers
feature with FootPrints authentication
or external authentication, if the FootPrints
Address Book is used.
Contact
data can be obtained dynamically from an outside contact database, such
as Microsoft Exchange. This only applies if the LDAP Address Book
link feature is enabled (using any authentication method). In this
case, the unique keys in the Address Book must also match the user IDs.
Refer to Auto Add Customers
Sign Up Form for more information on how contact data is populated
for the different types of authentication and Address Books when a user
signs up for the first time.
are displayed on the sign-up page to assist customers.