Passwordstate has a substantial amount of flexibility with multiple configuration options. It provides many options for storing, securing, sharing, displaying and using password credentials and associated information. This flexibility enables your Security Administrators to tailor your installation of Passwordstate to best match your organizational requirements.
While this flexibility can be invaluable it can sometimes also result in information overload for your users. To maximize the usage of Passwordstate across your user base you should consider streamlining the UI (User Interface). The intent being to provide a simplified, functional interface that doesn’t distract or overwhelm your users.
What Can be Simplified?
There are logically 4 categories of settings that can be used to simplify the UI for users. These categories can be thought of as;
- Passwordstate Build and Notifications
- Unused Menu Groups and Items
- Access to Hosts
- User Account Policies
Passwordstate Build and Notifications
This category relates to displaying the build of Passwordstate being used and access to the Notifications Area. The current Passwordstate Build is normally displayed in two separate areas, the Administration Area (Red Dot 1) and in the Passwordstate Title Logo (Red Dot 2) as per the image below;
The Notifications Area (Red Dot 3) displays notifications such any New Builds that are available, and alerts for,
- Maintenance renewal reminders
- Password Reset reminders for Forms-based and Local logins
- Pending Access Requests requiring review, approval or deny
- Days remaining for trial license
- Reminder for Encryption Key Rotation
- Windows Service unavailable on primary server
- Ad Blocker detected for the Passwordstate website
- Health Check based on errors in Error Console, excessive queued emails and excessive Auditing Records
The settings for Passwordstate Build and Notifications are contained in two separate areas. The first relating to the Passwordstate Build (Red Dots 1 and 2) is controlled by;
- For Red Dot 1, access to the Administration Tab is only provided for Security Administrators. This doesn’t affect standard users.
- For Red Dot 2, visibility of the Build Number at the end of the Passwordstate Title Logo is set under Administration->System Settings->branding Show Passwordstate Build Number. This allows you to Show the Build Number at the top of the screen to All Users or Only Security Administrators. Simply click on Only Security Administrators and your users will not see the build number when they login to Passwordstate.
Visibility of the Notifications Area is role dependent. Users will have access to any notifications of a functional nature, including;
- Password Reset reminders for their login,
- Any Pending Access Requests requiring their review, approval or deny, and,
- If they have an Ad Blocker that is detected for the Passwordstate website.
All other notifications are only displayed for Security Administrators with the exception of advertising a new Passwordstate Build is available. To ensure this is turned off for all standard users navigate to Administration->System Settings->check for updates and under Show new build alerts for make sure Only Security Administrators has been selected.
Unused Menu Groups and Items
Most users will never need all of the Menu Items located on the left-hand side of the screen. These can be either hidden, or disabled and when doing this we strongly recommend you base the changes on Security Groups as opposed to manually entering user accounts.
For our example, if a user is never going to use the Reports->Auditing option you can remove this Menu item by navigating to Administration->Feature Access->menu access, ensuring If a user doesn’t have access to a Menu has Hide it from them selected and then Set Permissions to not include that user (again based on a Security Group wherever possible),
This will remove the Menu item Reports->Auditing as per the image below (normally shown where the red arrow is),
Alternatively, if the users don’t require any of the menu items for a specific group, say Reports, then you can hide the entire group by using the Set Permissions next to the Menu Group. This can be done for all Menus Groups except Passwords.
Access to HOSTS
Generally speaking, the Hosts Tab is only used by staff or contractors in an IT Department. It is used to enable remote access into network devices, servers and other PCs. By default, all users have access to the Hosts Tab,
As most of your users will be unlikely to need the Hosts Tab you can remove it by navigating to Administration->Feature Access->Hosts and clicking on the Hosts Tab Permissions button,
From here it’s the standard Passwordstate permissions screen and you simply need to search for the groups that should have permission and add them using the >> button. You can also select the All Users and Security Groups and remove that from the Applied Permissions screen using the << button.
User Account Policies
Our recent Blog entry https://blog.clickstudios.com.au/develop-user-account-policies/ talks about how useful User Account Policies are for controlling settings for different groups of users. We’re not going to go back over the same material but simply highlight the settings and values you can consider for simplifying the UI for your users.
| Add UAP Tab | Setting ID | Setting | Value |
| User preferences | A14 | Show the Permission Model icon indicators next to Folders and Password Lists in the Passwords Navigation Tree | No |
| Password List Screen Options | B4 | Make the Recent Activity Grid visible to the user This is all the Auditing data for the selected Password List | False |
| B6 | Make the Pie Charts visible to the user Pie Charts on the right-hand side of the page | False | |
| Home Page Screen Options | C1 | Dashboard Layout Settings Use the icon to the right to organise Zones and Panels. Do not try to modify the data in this textbox manually | Tick Zone 1 and Zone 2 |
| C2 | Show the Password Statistics Chart Show or hide the chart which represents Auditing data, displayed at the bottom of the page | False |
And when you put it all together…
Using one of our internal users as a test case you can go from this,
To this,
Hopefully this helps demonstrate how you can simplify the User Interface and not distract or overwhelm your users with information and options they may not require.
If you have feedback and are unsure where to send it? Send it through to support@clickstudios.com.au.