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PRTG Manual: System Administration—User Accounts

<%NUMBERING1%>.<%NUMBERING2%>.<%NUMBERING3%> PRTG Manual: System Administration—User Accounts

To open system administration, select Setup | System Administration from the main menu. Click on the tabs to change the different settings.

System Administration Bar

You can define the following aspects of your PRTG system setup:

PRTG administrator users can change all user account settings and add new users.

If you use PRTG on premises and open the system administration page from another administration page, PRTG will ask you to enter your credentials again for security reasons if 15 minutes (900 seconds) have passed since your last credential-based login. A dialog box will appear. Enter your Login Name and Password for PRTG in the corresponding fields and confirm to continue.

User Accounts Overview

The User Accounts tab shows a list of all user accounts which exist on this PRTG server. The Users table shows various information about each user at a glance.

Object: the name of the user account. Click it to open the User Account Settings.
Type: the account type, for example, PRTG Administrator user or Read Only User
Email: the Primary Email Address of this user account
Primary Group: the Primary Group of this user account. Click it to open this user group's settings.
Group Memberships: all user groups that contain this user account
Active/Paused: the status of this user account

See also section Working with Table Lists for more information.

You have several options to manage user accounts and groups on this page:

To change a user's settings, select it from the list by clicking the username. The available setting options are the same as shown in the My Account settings of the currently logged in user (plus some account control options).

To add a new user to PRTG on premises, click the New User button. The options are the same as for existing users (with slight differences).
To add a new user to PRTG on demand, click the Invite User button. The options are almost the same as for existing users, but the initial login password will be generated automatically. The new user can change it later. Click Send Invite to save your settings and to send the invitation per email to the defined Primary Email Address.

To batch-add several users at once in a simple way, please click the Multiple New Users button. In the dialog box that appears, select an existing user group from the dropdown menu and enter or paste a list of email addresses. They can be separated by a space, comma, semicolon, or a new line. Click the Add button to confirm. For each address, PRTG will create a new local user account within the selected user group, carrying the email address as value for Login Name, Username, and Email Address. A new password will be generated automatically and sent to the email address.

To add a new user group, click the New User Group button. The options are the same as for existing groups (with slight differences).

Access rights in PRTG are given via user groups. Please make sure a user account is member of the correct user group and give access to this group in your device tree object's settings.

Predefined objects cannot be deleted!

User Accounts Settings

This documentation refers to the PRTG System Administrator user accessing the Ajax interface on a master node. If you use other user accounts, interfaces, or nodes, you might not see all of the options in the way described here. If you use a cluster installation, note that failover nodes are read-only by default.

User Account
Login Name	Enter the login name for the user. This option is not available in PRTG on demand.
Display Name	Enter a name that the user recognizes. It will not be used for login purposes.
Primary Email Address	Enter the user's email address. Please use an email client that can show HTML emails, otherwise you cannot read emails from PRTG.
Password	Define the user password. For security reasons, the account settings page does not contain the password. Choose between: Don't change Specify new password If you choose to specify a new password, enter the old password and then the new password twice. The new password must be at least 8 characters long. It must contain a number and a capital letter. Leading and trailing whitespaces will be cut. The password of a PRTG Administrator user can only be changed by the same PRTG Administrator user. This option is not available in PRTG on demand.
Passhash	Click Show passhash to display the passhash for the selected user. You need the passhash of a user if you use the PRTG Application Programming Interface (API). This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here. This option is not available in PRTG on demand.

API Access
These settings are only available in PRTG on demand.
API Username	Shows the username of the current user account. You need a username if you use the PRTG Application Programming Interface (API). This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here.
API Passhash	Click Show passhash to display the passhash for the selected user. You need the passhash of a user if you use the PRTG Application Programming Interface (API). This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here.
Reset API Passhash	Click Generate new passhash to reset the passhash of the current user.

Account Control
Account Type	This setting is only visible to administrator users. However, it will not show if the user who's account you want to modify is a member of a group with administrative rights. Define the account type for the current user. Choose between: Read/Write User: You can change settings. Read Only User: You cannot edit any settings except your own password. This is a good choice for public or semi-public logins. This setting cannot be changed for the default administrator user.
Allow Acknowledge Alarms	This setting is only visible if Read Only User is enabled above. Acknowledging an alarm is an action that requires write access rights. However, you can explicitly allow this action to read-only users. If enabled, they still do not have write access, but may acknowledge alarms. Choose between: Allow: Allow acknowledging alarms for this user. Deny: The user will not be able to acknowledge alarms.
Password Changes	Decide if you want the user to be able to change their account's password or not. If you allow the user to change the password, this option will be available in the My Account settings of the respective user. Choose between: User may change his account's password Deny the right to change the password (default) This field is only visible if you edit this option for read-only users as an administrator.
Primary Group	This setting is available only for administrator users. Select the primary group for the current user. Every user has to be member of a primary group to make sure there is no user without group membership. Membership in other user groups is optional. For user experience there is no difference between the primary and other user groups. You cannot change the primary group of Active Directory users. Users that you added with Active Directory Integration can only have this AD group as their primary group. If you need to change this, please delete this user account and add it again.
Status	This setting is only shown for administrator users. Define the status of the current user. Choose between: Active: The current user can login to the account. Inactive: The current user's login is disabled. Use this option to temporarily deny access for this user. This setting cannot be changed for the default administrator user.
Last Login	Shows the time stamp of the user's last login. This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here.

User Groups
Member of	Shows the groups the current user is member of. Access rights to the device tree are defined on group level. This setting is shown for your information only and cannot be changed here.

Auto Refresh and Alerting
Auto Refresh	Define if you want PRTG to reload web pages automatically for the current user. Choose between: Refresh pages (recommended): Automatically refresh the single page elements on the web pages in PRTG. No automatic refresh: Do not automatically refresh web pages.
Auto Refresh Interval (Sec.)	This setting is only relevant if you enable auto refresh above. Enter the number of seconds that PRTG waits between two refreshes. We recommend that you use 30 seconds or more. Minimum value is 20 seconds. Shorter intervals create more CPU load on the server running PRTG. If you experience load problems while using the web interface (or PRTG maps), please set a higher interval.
Play Audible Alarms	Define when PRTG will play an audible alarm the current user on web pages whenever there are new alarms. Choose between: Never: Do not play sound files on any web pages. On dashboard pages only: When there are new alarms, play a predefined sound on dashboard pages only. The sound will be played with every refresh of the dashboard page if there is at least one new alarm. On all pages: When there are new alarms, play a predefined sound on all web pages. The sound will be played with every page refresh if there is at least one new alarm. Audible alarms are only played if the New Alarms value in the Global Header Area of the PRTG web interface is greater than 0 after a page refresh. The number of existing alarms is not considered. For more information about audible notifications and supported browsers, see this Knowledge Base article: Which audible notifications are available in PRTG? Can I change the default sound?

Auto Refresh and Alerting

Auto Refresh

Define if you want PRTG to reload web pages automatically for the current user. Choose between:

Refresh pages (recommended): Automatically refresh the single page elements on the web pages in PRTG.
No automatic refresh: Do not automatically refresh web pages.

Auto Refresh Interval (Sec.)

This setting is only relevant if you enable auto refresh above. Enter the number of seconds that PRTG waits between two refreshes. We recommend that you use 30 seconds or more. Minimum value is 20 seconds.

Shorter intervals create more CPU load on the server running PRTG. If you experience load problems while using the web interface (or PRTG maps), please set a higher interval.

Play Audible Alarms

Define when PRTG will play an audible alarm the current user on web pages whenever there are new alarms. Choose between:

Never: Do not play sound files on any web pages.
On dashboard pages only: When there are new alarms, play a predefined sound on dashboard pages only. The sound will be played with every refresh of the dashboard page if there is at least one new alarm.
On all pages: When there are new alarms, play a predefined sound on all web pages. The sound will be played with every page refresh if there is at least one new alarm.

Audible alarms are only played if the New Alarms value in the Global Header Area of the PRTG web interface is greater than 0 after a page refresh. The number of existing alarms is not considered.

For more information about audible notifications and supported browsers, see this Knowledge Base article: Which audible notifications are available in PRTG? Can I change the default sound?

Web Interface
Homepage URL	Define the user's default page, which is loaded after logging in or clicking on the Home button in the main menu.
Max. Groups/Devices per Group	To provide a fast and smooth user experience, PRTG attempts to reduce page size when displaying the device tree. It automatically collapses groups and devices when reaching a specified number of items. Enter this threshold for groups and devices here. We recommend values between 10 and 30.
Max. Sensors per Device	In order to provide a fast and smooth user experience, PRTG attempts to reduce page size when displaying the device tree. It automatically collapses groups and devices when reaching a specified number of items. Enter this threshold for sensors per devices here. We recommend values between 10 and 30.
Timezone	Define the time zone for the current user. Depending on the time zone you select here, PRTG shows the current user's local time zone in all data tables and graph legends. PRTG receives the UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) from the system time set on the PRTG core server for this purpose.
Date Format	Define the date format for the current user. This setting will take effect after the next login.

Ticket System
Email Notifications	Define if you want to get emails from the ticket system. Choose between: I want to receive an email whenever a ticket changes: You will receive an email each time a ticket is assigned to you or your user group, or if a ticket that is assigned to you or your user group is changed. If you edit tickets that are assigned to you or your user group, or you assign a ticket to yourself or your user group, you will not get an email. I do not want to receive any emails from the ticket system: You will not get any emails about tickets.

Ticket System

Email Notifications

Define if you want to get emails from the ticket system. Choose between:

I want to receive an email whenever a ticket changes: You will receive an email each time a ticket is assigned to you or your user group, or if a ticket that is assigned to you or your user group is changed.
If you edit tickets that are assigned to you or your user group, or you assign a ticket to yourself or your user group, you will not get an email.
I do not want to receive any emails from the ticket system: You will not get any emails about tickets.

Notification Contacts

In the Notification Contacts tab you can define recipients for each user account. Recipients can be email addresses, phone numbers, or push devices (iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices with the corresponding PRTG smartphone app).

Comments

On the Comments tab you can enter free text for each object. You can use this function for documentation purposes or to leave information for other users.

Click Save to save your settings. If you change tabs or use the main menu, all changes to the settings will be lost!

History

In the History tab all changes in the settings of an object are logged with a timestamp, the name of the PRTG user who made the change, and a message. The history log retains the last 100 entries.

Click the Continue button to save your settings. If you change tabs or use the main menu, all changes to the settings will be lost!

Knowledge Base: Which audible notifications are available in PRTG? Can I change the default sound?

https://kb.paessler.com/en/topic/26303

Setup—Topics

Others

There are some settings that you must make in the PRTG Administration Tool, available as native Windows application. For more details, please see the sections:

Keywords: Account Settings,Configure,Configure User Account