Access & Identity Management
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Administrators FAQ
This FAQ document has been compiled from questions asked by Athens administrators. Its aim is to give answers to some of the most common questions regarding the Athens service and to help administrators with the management of their accounts. A glossary of terms used within the Athens website is available online.
General
- How much does it cost?
- Can my University become a DSP for local services we provide to staff and students?
- What kind of hardware do I need to use the Athens administration interface?
- How do I become an Athens organisation?
- What is Athens?
- Who owns Athens?
- Can the Athens service be used by anyone?
- Does Athens impose any limits on the number of users logging into a resource at the same time?
Administrators
- I am unable to connect to the administrators home page
- How do I modify my own admin account details?
- How do I register as an Athens administrator?
- I am the current Domain Administrator, how do I appoint a replacement?
- When appointing administrators at lower levels, should they be chosen amongst Library staff?
- Can there be more than one domain administrator at an organisation?
- What if an administrator is away?
- Can the domain administrator update or delete accounts created by a sub-administrator?
- Is there an incident reporting mechanism to notify administrators of service issues?
- Will there be a warning that an account or a password is about to expire?
- Are administrators able to access resources with their administrator's account?
- How long does a session last after logging in to the Administration interface?
- What are the implications of the addition of section 1.1.14 to the Terms and Conditions?
Creating new users
- How are personal accounts created?
- What is the best way of setting up accounts?
- How does account bulk uploading work?
- How does self-registration work?
- How can we check that self-registered users are real people?
- Can administrators vet accounts created via self-registration?
- What contact details will be available for Athens users?
- Can we keep the total number of personal accounts under control?
- Can local student or payroll numbers be included in the registration information?
- Can we give several users the same username and password?
Accounts
- How can we make sure accounts are only used by the designated user?
- What should I do if I suspect that an account I administer is being misused?
- What will the user see when logging into a service authenticated by Athens?
- Can a personal account user change his account details?
- When deleting accounts, do you need to know the exact username?
- Can you search for an account?
- Do you need to allocate a group when you set up a new account?
- Are new/amended accounts immediately live?
- Can personal accounts be shared?
- How do I deal with users who need personal accounts but have no email address?
Passwords
- How are passwords chosen for users?
- Will some passwords be disallowed?
- How secure are Athens passwords?
- How can you change a password for a user?
- Are users able to change their own passwords?
- If a user who created their account via the self-registration interface forgets their password, can they register again?
Grouping users
- Can one account belong to more than one user group?
- Does the deletion of accounts come with a warning or an 'undo' button?
- Can I put all my administrators in a user group and would this stop them from being able to create their own groups?
Deleting users
- How do accounts expire?
- Is it possible to delete users in bulk?
- Are users able to delete their own accounts?
- How can we prevent users using their accounts after leaving the organisation?
- What happens if someone changes institution, or stays on in a different capacity?
Access to resources
- Is Athens able to protect local resources?
- Why should access to a resource be restricted?
- How do new users agree to the terms and conditions?
Permission sets
- Can Athens accounts go back to the resource allocation method?
- Do I have to allocate more than one permission set to my users?
- How can I convert just some of my accounts to see how permission sets work?
- We use bulk upload files to create and/or amend Athens accounts. Do I need to change these uploads?
- Cascading access for a resource did not affect my accounts with permission sets. Why is that?
- I have removed all the permission sets from an account, but the permission set icon is still displayed. Why is that?
- Why do I need JavaScript enabled in my browser?
Attributes
- What is an attribute?
- Why is student the only attribute?
- Do I have to use attributes?
- What benefits do attributes hold for my users?
- I am an Athens administrator working in the health sector. Why can't I use the student attribute?
- How do I allocate an attribute to a user account?
- How do I know when a user account has the student attribute?
- Currently, I only use one permission set that is allocated to all student and staff Athens accounts. What do I do if I want to use the student attribute?
- My organisation uses bulk uploads to create Athens accounts. What do I do if I want to use the student attribute?
- Can I bulk upload attributes?
- I use a combination of permission sets for our Athens accounts. If I want to use attributes, which permission set should I give the student attribute to?
- My Athens accounts arent using permission sets yet. How can I use attributes?
- Is the student attribute affected by the Data Protection Act?
- Will users be able to change this attribute?
- My organisation is using AthensDA, or is implementing/considering AthensDA. Can we use attributes?
Statistics
- How is the availability of statistics reconciled with privacy for users?
- Can sub-administrators obtain statistics?
