Adding, Editing, and Deleting Users

At the root of managing Users is adding, editing, and deleting them. As long as you’re the Administrative user, you can do all these things and more.

Adding Users

Adding Users is straightforward:

1. From the Product Menu, click Control Panel → Users → Users and Organizations.

2. In the Users tab, click the Add button .

   

   Figure 1: Add Users from the Users and Organizations section of the Control Panel.

3. Fill out the Add User form and click Save. At a minimum, provide a Screen Name, First Name, Last Name, and Email Address for the User.

   Note: Screen names and email addresses are not interchangeable. A screen name cannot contain an @ symbol because it is used in the URL to a user’s private page.

   The Add User functionality is split over several independent forms. Saving the first form creates the user, and then you’ll see a success message saying

   Success. Your request completed successfully. 
   

After submission of the first form, you see a larger form with many sections. The one you’re on is the Information section. To the left is a navigation pane where you can continue configuring the user you’re adding by clicking through the available sections. The options in the left menu change as you click through the tabs at the top. Peruse the sections for the three tabs (General, Contact, Preferences) and fill in all the applicable information.

Figure 2: At a minimum, enter a screen name, email address, and first name to create a new user account. Then you'll be taken to the Information form and can continue configuring the user.

You don’t have to fill anything else out right now. Just note that when the user account was created, a password was automatically generated. If Liferay was correctly installed and a mail server was set up, an email message with the User’s new password was sent to the User’s email address.

If you haven’t set up a mail server, click the Password item from the General menu and manually set a password for your new user. Enter the new password twice.

Figure 3: Enter the password twice to manually set the password for a user. If the Password Policy you're using is configured to allow it, select whether to require the user to reset their password the first time they sign in to the portal.

Editing Users

If you click on Users and Organizations in the Control Panel, you’ll see your own user’s account in the list of Users, along with any others. To change something about a particular user, click the Actions button () next to that user.

Choosing Edit takes you back to the Edit User page where you can modify any aspect of the User account including the screen name, email address, first name, last name, Site and Organization memberships, Roles, etc.

Choosing Permissions allows you to define which Roles have permissions to edit the User.

Choosing Manage Pages allows you to configure the personal pages of a User.

Choosing Impersonate User opens another browser window that loads the site as if you were the User so you can test your User management on a User to make sure you’re achieving the desired behavior, without having to repeatedly log out of your administrator account and into the User’s account.

Choosing Deactivate deactivates the user’s account. The User is still in your database along with all the rest of your Users, but the account is deactivated, so the User cannot sign in to the portal. You can toggle between active and inactive Users in the Users view. If all the Users are active, this filtering option doesn’t appear.

Choosing Erase Personal Data deletes the User’s personal data.

Choosing Export Personal Data lets you download the User’s personal data.

Figure 4: You can choose whether to view active or inactive (deactivated) portal users in the users list found at *Product Menu* → *Control Panel* → *Users* → *Users and Organizations*.

Most Users can’t perform any of the above actions. In fact, most Users won’t have access to the Control Panel at all. You can perform all of the above functions because you have administrative access.

Deleting Users

You must be careful when deleting Users. To guard against accidental deletion of Users, a two-step process must be followed: deactivate first, then delete.

1. Find the User to delete in the Users tab of Control Panel → Users → Users and Organizations. If you have a lot of Users, save time by searching for the User.

2. Click the Actions menu for the User and select Deactivate. You’re asked to confirm that you want to deactivate the User. Click OK.

   You’ll see a success message and the User disappears, but isn’t gone yet.

3. By default the Users table displays only Active users. Click on Filter and order in the top of the table and a dropdown menu appears. Click Inactive, and you can see the User you just deactivated.

4. Click the Actions menu again, and click Delete if you really mean to delete the User. Confirm that you want to delete the User, and now the User is gone. This time, it’s for real.

Deactivated Users: Deactivating a user means the user can’t log in to the portal. He/she has no more permissions in the sites and pages of the portal than a guest, although the account still exists in the system.

Users are reactivated by a portal administrator finding them in the Users table (be sure you’re filtering the table results by Deactivated users), clicking the Actions menu, and selecting Activate. There’s no confirmation window for activation: they’re automatically restored to their former status once Activate is clicked.

Now you understand the basic principles of user administration. There are important additional topics in the next article that you should consider mandatory information for all portal administrators, so do continue reading.