Managing Users, Roles, and Groups → About User Accounts → Working With User Accounts → Managing External Users

Managing External Users

External users can be granted a minimal set of privileges that enables them to submit and view certain items and run reports that are created for them. For a list of privileges available to external users, refer to the privilege tables in About Privileges. For information about external users and system tables, refer to Privilege Behavior for System Tables.

Self-registration of external users is also available for on-premise customers. This feature is enabled in SBM System Administrator.

Automatically Adding External Users to a Group

You can designate a group to which new external users should automatically be added. This enables you to quickly grant access to customers and others who need limited access to your system. This feature is also used for self-registration of external users, which is enabled in SBM System Administrator. (On-premise only.)

Note: Only one group in your system can be set as the group to which external users can be added.

To automatically add external users to a group:

  1. From the Administrator Portal, select the Groups icon.
  2. Create or edit a group with External User product access.
  3. Select the Add New External Users Automatically check box.
  4. Save your changes.

Setting Up Reports for External Users

External users can run guest-level reports that contain primary items submitted by the external user or by other contacts from the external user's company. External users must be granted privileges to view items in a particular project, as well as to run guest-level reports. In addition, guest-level reports appropriate for external users must be created in a project that external users can access.

External users can also run built-in reports if they are granted privileges to view primary items. Privileges determine the information returned by the built-in report.

Note: By default, the home page report for external users who have privileges to submit items is set to the "All Items I Submitted" built-in report. Items from the projects they can submit into appear in the report.

To set up reports for external users:

  1. Prepare the workflow associated with the project from which external users will generate reports. External users can only view fields in the User Fields section, so make sure fields pertinent to users are placed in this section. In addition, move fields you do not want external users to view into a different section. For details, refer to SBM Composer Guide.
  2. Verify that external users are granted the following Item privileges for the project associated with the workflow you prepared in Step 1:
    • View Items If Submitter

      Grant this privilege to enable external users to view items they submitted. Users must also be granted the "Submit New Items" privilege.

    • View Item If Contact

      Grant this privilege to enable external users to view items for which they are selected in a Contacts relational field based on the system Contacts table. This privilege enables them to view items submitted by others users as long as they are selected as a contact and their Contact record is associated with their user account. This setting is located on the General tab when you add or edit a user account.

    • View Item If Contact's Company

      Grant this privilege to enable external users to view items for which their company is selected in a Companies relational field based on the system Companies table. Items may include those submitted by the external user, those submitted by external users from the same company, or items submitted by other users as long as company is set to that of the external user. In addition, users' contact records must be associated with user accounts. This setting is located on the General tab when you add or edit a user account.

  3. Grant the "Run Guest Level Reports" Report privilege for the project or projects you want external users to run reports against.

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