Setting up XorMon for other users

Setting up XorMon for other users (draft)

Overview

An administrator (user "xormon" or any member of the Admin group) can prepare XorMon for other users. You decide which devices each team can see, and you prepare dashboards, alerts, reports and other tools for them. When the users sign in, everything is ready.

The setup has five steps:

  1. Create a user group and set its ACL.
  2. Create users and add them to the group.
  3. Add the administrator to the group.
  4. Create content and share it with the group.
  5. Sign in as one of the users and check the result.

Access to devices is controlled only by ACLs. Tags and Custom Groups help you select items, but they do not limit what users can see.

The examples below use the user group "TeamA" and the user "JaneDee".

Step 1: Create a user group and set its ACL

  1. Go to Settings -> Users and switch to the "Groups" tab.
  2. Click "+ Add Group", fill in the group information and click "Create Group".
  3. Open the new group and switch to the "ACL" tab.
  4. Select the device classes, devices or items (such as VMs or volumes) the group should see.
  5. Save the configuration.

Screenshot: ACL tab of the group TeamA

ACLs apply in all views and tools, including dashboards. Users never see data from devices outside their ACL, not even on a dashboard shared with them.

Step 2: Create users and add them to the group

  1. Go to Settings -> Users and switch to the "Users" tab.
  2. Click "+ Add User" and fill in the user information.
  3. If the user should only use the content you prepare, check "Read-only" (see Read-only users below).
  4. Click "Create User".
  5. Open the new user, select "TeamA" and click the right arrow to assign the group.

Screenshot: user JaneDee assigned to TeamA

If your users sign in through AD / LDAP or SSO, map their LDAP group or SSO role to the XorMon group instead. See AD / LDAP and SSO.

Step 3: Add the administrator to the group

This step is easy to miss, but sharing does not work without it. You can only share content with user groups you are a member of. For example, the Shared section of the Dashboard menu shows a folder only for your own user groups. The administrator is not a member of TeamA by default, so the TeamA folder does not appear.

  1. Go to Settings -> Users and switch to the "Users" tab.
  2. Open the user "xormon" (or your own admin account).
  3. Select "TeamA" and click the right arrow to assign the group.

Screenshot: user xormon assigned to TeamA

The administrator keeps full access to all devices. Members of the Admin group have full administrator rights regardless of their other user groups.

If you prepare content for several teams, add the administrator to each of their groups.

Step 4: Create content and share it with the group

Dashboards

  1. Open the Dashboard menu. The Shared section now shows the TeamA folder.
  2. Right-click the TeamA folder and create a new dashboard.
  3. Add graphs to it. Open a graph, click the star in its top-right corner and select the dashboard under Group Dashboards.
  4. To add all key graphs of a device at once, open the device's Summary page and click the dashboard template icon.

Screenshot: TeamA folder in the Shared section of the Dashboard menu

More details in Dashboard sharing.

Other tools

When you create any of the tools below, select TeamA as the group to share with.

Tool Where to create it
Custom groups Settings -> Custom Group
Storage groups Settings -> Grouping -> Storage
Email groups Settings -> Alerting -> Email
Alerts (performance, anomaly, ping) Settings -> Alerting -> Alert
Reports Settings -> Reporter -> Reports
Change Tracker filters Change Tracker

Screenshot: "share with group" selection in the Custom Group form

Tip: For shared alerts and reports, send messages to a shared email group. Then any member of the group can manage the recipients.

Step-by-step examples for each tool are in Group sharing how-to.

Step 5: Check the result

Sign in as JaneDee and check that:

  • the menu shows only the devices allowed by the TeamA ACL
  • the Dashboard menu shows the TeamA folder with the dashboards you created
  • the shared alerts, reports and custom groups are listed in Settings

Screenshot: XorMon as seen by JaneDee

Read-only users

Shared content belongs to the whole group. Regular members can edit or delete it, and a deleted item disappears for everyone in the group.

To keep the content exactly as you prepared it, create the users as read-only. Read-only users:

  • can use the shared dashboards, alerts, reports and other tools, but cannot edit, move or delete them
  • can create their own personal dashboards
  • can browse the XorMon interface, limited to the devices in their ACL, but cannot change any settings

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