How do I create user and group accounts?

Important: Only WebCATS administrators can create user accounts and groups.

A user account consists of a user name and password and a set of permissions. When someone logs into WebCATS, it is the user account that determines their level of access to the database. If you anticipate assigning the same set of permissions repeatedly to multiple users, you'll want to consider creating a group account.

This article is divided into four topics:

Creating User Accounts
Creating Group Accounts
Assigning Permissions to User and Group Accounts
Best Practices for Permissions

Creating User Accounts

It is important to note that a user account is not the same as a counselor record. For example, administrative staff may be provided with a user account so that they can do data entry on behalf of one or more counselors, even though they themselves do not provide one-on-one counseling with a client and thus would not have a counselor record in the database.

The steps for creating a user account are outlined next:

If you are creating a user account for a new counselor and you haven't yet created a counselor record for that counselor, you must do so before you can create the counselor's user account (View|Counselor).
Select Manage|Accounts from WebCATS' left-hand menu.
Click the New Account button from one of two places:

The account record summary view to create a new account record from scratch.
The detail view of an existing account record that you would like to copy and use as a basis for your new account record. Note: If you intend to copy a user account multiple times for the purpose of creating several sets of identical permissions, you may want to consider creating a group account instead, as discussed in the Creating Group Accounts section of this article.

On the Account Detail screen, enter a name for the user account record into the Account Name field, as shown in the next graphic.

Next, enter values for the login and password that is required to access WebCATS.

Note: Passwords are case sensitive; login names are not.

To grant the user full access to every area of the WebCATS database, including the ability to create user accounts, select the Administrative privileges? check box.

By default, all administrator accounts are assigned the highest level of read, edit, add, and delete permissions to the entire database and, therefore, there is no reason to later assign individual permissions. In addition, there are many privileges that are only available to administrator accounts, as discussed in the companion FAQ titled How do user account permissions impact my ability to access WebCATS?.

From the Home Center field's drop-down menu, assign the center that the user is most closely affiliated with.

Note: This becomes the default current active center when the user logs in. Assuming you grant the user permissions to other centers, the user can switch centers at any time, but the center chosen here is considered by WebCATS to be the likely center for most of the user's activity.

From the Counselor field's drop-down menu, you can optionally assign the counselor that the user is most closely affiliated with.

Note: This default is desirable if the user represents a counselor or is solely affiliated with a single counselor because new records entered by the user will always default to the counselor chosen here. However, if the user enters data on behalf of many counselors, then it may be preferable to leave "Undefined" as the default.

Note: While it is likely that you are creating a user account for a particular counselor and there is a one-to-one correlation, this is not always the case. For example, you could be creating a user account for somebody in administrative services that is entering data on behalf of a counselor.

From the Default Funding Source field's drop-down menu, assign the funding source that the user most commonly works under.

Note: As with the default counselor selection, this default determines which funding source initially displays when new records are created by the user.

There are two types of funding source locks that can be placed on a user account. Select either (or both) that apply:

Lock funding source for data entry?. If you lock an account's funding source for data entry, the user will not be able to edit the Funding Source fields in any records that they create or modify, regardless of the add or edit permissions later assigned to the account.
Lock funding source for reporting?. If you lock an account's funding source for reporting, the user will not be able to view or generate reports for any client activity records or conference records that are funded by a source other than their account's default funding source. This restriction applies to client activity and conference records only. It's important to note that this restriction does not apply to scorecards; to keep a user from viewing data from another funding source in the scorecards area of WebCATS, you'll need to restrict their permissions for the scorecards area of the database.

If you would like to prevent the user from editing client IDs in existing records or overriding the system-defined client IDs automatically generated for new client records, select the Lock client IDs? option.
If you would like the user to be able to see other users' activities in the "Recent Database Changes" area of MyWebCATS, select the Allow user to view other users' activity in MyWebCATS? option.
And last, but not least, you have the ability to assign a scorecard to the user's dashboard. For more information on scorecard dashboards, see the FAQ titled How do I display scorecards on the WebCATS dashboard?.
Click the Update button to save your new user account record.
You're not done yet (unless you gave the user administrative privileges in step 6 or used an existing account as the basis for this new account)! You still need to assign a set of permissions to the user. There are two ways of going about this:

You can click the Add Group Membership button to quickly assign a previously-established set of permissions to the user, as discussed in the following section, and/or...
You can click the Add Permission button to individually assign permissions to the user account. For detailed information on the various levels of permissions, see the FAQ titled How do user account permissions impact my ability to access WebCATS?.

Creating Group Accounts

A group account is similar to a user account, except that it doesn't possess a login name or password. It only contains permissions. Group accounts exist as an efficient way of assigning the same core set of permissions to several users. In addition, edits to group account permissions automatically cascade down to all group members, saving you the trouble of individually editing each user account when global updates need to be made.

The steps for creating a group account are outlined next:

Select Manage|Accounts from WebCATS' left-hand menu.
Click the New Group button from one of two places:

The account record summary view to create a new group account record from scratch.
The detail view of an existing group account record that you would like to copy and use as a basis for your new group account record.

Enter a group name and a short name (i.e. abbreviated name) for your new group account record. The short name is used in various columnar summary views.
Click the Add button to save your new group account.
Click the Add Permission button to assign permissions to the group account. For detailed information on the various levels of permissions, see the FAQ titled How do user account permissions impact my ability to access WebCATS?.
Click the Add button to add members (i.e. existing user accounts) to the group account.

Note: In addition to adding members from a group account record, you can also assign group membership from an account record.

Assigning Permissions to User and Group Accounts

When you assign permissions to a user or group account, it's important to note that each set of permissions is applied in combination to create the least restrictive permissions possible. For example, if you create one set of permissions that allows a user access to every single area of the database, but then create a second set of permissions that denies access to one single area of the database, WebCATS will not respect the second set of permissions.

Similarly, if a user is a member of group, that user's personal permissions combine with the group's permissions to create the least restrictive permissions possible.

Important: Before following the set of steps below to assign permissions to a user or group account, we strongly recommend that you first review the FAQ titled How do user account permissions impact my ability to access WebCATS? so that you have a thorough understanding of the exact impact each permission type will have on the user's ability to interact with WebCATS.

The steps for assigning permissions to a user or group account are outlined next:

Open the user or group account that you would like to assign permissions to.
From the detail view, click the Add Permission button.
Select the center(s) and database area(s) that the current permission set will apply to.

Decide which type of read and edit permissions you want to assign to the center/database area combination previously selected.

Note: If you assign the ability to edit center ownership, be sure that the account also has the ability to add records to another center's database. Otherwise, the account will not be able to successfully change a record's center ownership.

Determine whether the user or group will have add or delete permissions for the center/database area combination previously selected.
Click the Add button to save the permission set.
Repeat steps 2-6 to create as many permission sets as necessary.

Best Practices for Permissions

WebCATS has a flexible permission structure allowing you to finely control the capabilities of each individual user. Permissions play an important role in maintaining the integrity of your WebCATS database. You don’t want to grant powerful permissions (e.g. delete or edit) to users who should not be able to signficantly impact the database. However, you also don’t want to restrict permissions to the point that users aren't able to do their jobs correctly.

For this reason, OutreachSystems has several "best practices" recommendations to maintain a healthy WebCATS database:

Provide View & Report permissions to every user for as many database areas and centers as possible. This goes a long way toward preventing duplicate records.
Provide Edit and Add permissions to as many users as possible, for as many database areas and centers as possible. It will likely be a smaller subset of users that has the additional ability to edit and add records.
Provide Delete permissions to as few users as possible, and as few database areas and centers as possible. Ideally, only WebCATS administrators and program directors should have the ability to delete records.

Want more? Browse our extensive list of WebCATS FAQs.