User Management

Create New Users

Please Note: The ability to create new users is limited to Site Administrators. 

1. Log into your site and click on the People tab, then + Add CAS User
   
   
2. Enter username (full Cal Poly email address, include @calpoly.edu!). If you are adding multiple users, add one on each line. When the desired usernames have been entered, click Create new account(s)
   
   
    
3. The accounts have now been added, but you have to configure a few things before they can be used. Configurations are set from the account page.
   
   You can access the account page a couple of ways. The easiest is to click on the username at the end of the confirmation message you will receive after creating the account:
   
   Alternatively, you can go back to the People page. You may find it useful to sort  the users table by Member For, bringing any accounts you just created to the top of the list.
   
   When you locate the account you want to configure, you can click Edit to go to the account page.
   
   
4. On the account page you will need to copy and paste the username into the field Email Address.
5. Next, set the account Role. For your average user, this will be Advanced Author. More information on roles is available at the bottom of this page, and on our Roles and Permissions guide.
6. Be sure to click Save at the bottom of the page to commit your changes.
   
   
7. Let the user know that their account is active and they can now login with their Cal Poly Portal username and password.
   
   Note: Do Not enter a password for the user on the account configuration page.
   Leaving the password fields blanks allows the user to login with their CAS credentials.

Roles and Levels of Access

Below is a brief overview of the different roles you can assign users on your Drupal site. For full details on the permissions associated with each role, check out our Roles and Permissions page.

Contributors and Authors

These roles are designed to be used with workbench sections. By default, they are not assigned to any sections on the site, so until assigned to a section they will not be able to access any content.

These roles can not publish content – anything they create will need to be approved before it goes live.

Advanced Authors

In most cases, this is the role you should be assigning to the average user. It has access to all content on the site, and can publish new content, or even approve content created by Contributors/Authors. It also has access to site-level features such as menus and blocks.

Site Administrators

This is the highest role a user can be given on a Drupal site. The site admin is intended to be the person in charge of the site, and the expansive privileges associated with it mean it should be used sparingly. Don't give this role to average users - on most sites, there should only be one or two site admins.

Blocking and Deleting Access

When employees leave the University or otherwise no longer need access to the site, the Site Administrator (Site Owner) is responsible for removing their access. User accounts should not be deleted, as this action renders the content they created "anonymous". Drupal designed anonymous content to be editable by anyone, so if pages are left without a user assigned, anyone in the public will be able to edit that page. So use this with extreme caution. 

Instead of deleting accounts, they should be changed from active to blocked. To block accounts, go to the People Tab, click Edit next to the email address, and change from active to blocked.

My Users Can't Login!

The majority of the time users cannot login after being given an account on your site, the cause is an incorrect CAS username.

For example, you may have created their account using their short username (jnmustang) or their name (Jane Mustang), which will not work. Instead, use their full Cal Poly email address (jnmustang@calpoly.edu).

If a username was entered incorrectly, you can go to the People page and:

1. Check the box next to the affected user, select Remove CAS usernames from the Update Options dropdown, and click Update.
2. Click Edit next to the user, and then the Edit tab on their page. Change their username and email address to include @calpoly.edu, and click Save.
3. Go back to the People page and check the box next to their name again.
4. Select Create CAS username from the Update Options dropdown, then click Update.