Admin Guide For User Management

• Introduction
• What can you do with User Management?
• Step-by-step guide for Company Administrators 
  1. Request User Management administrator access
  2. Accessing User Management
  3. Add new users and assign product permissions
  4. Changing password guidelines
• User Management Actions
  • Automated packet provisioning
  • Password resetting
  • View company product package permissions and quota 
  • Bulk editing user product package permissions
  • View user activity
  • Assign administrator role to users
  • Delete users
  • Removing product package permissions from a user
  • Default User Preferences

 

Introduction

We often find customers are completely dependent on their account manager or product support when users need to be added, edited, or removed from their account. This results in the following challenges:

• Little visibility on when and whether changes have been made.
• No control and lag in seeing effects of user change request.
• No easy way to identify regular vs. inactive users to maximize license use efficiency.

User management provides a solution to the above. It is a tool to empower companies by giving them the ability to manage their own users.

 

What can you do with User Management?

There are a range of functions in User Management, which include:

• View company product package permissions and quota
• Add new users
• Edit user details
• Reset password for users
• Assign and remove product permissions from users 
• View list of all Patsnap users in the company
• View when a user has last logged into the product
• Delete users
• Assign an administrator role to users

And more...

 

Step-by-step guide for Company Administrators

1. Request User Management administrator access

[If you already have access, please skip to step 2]

• Email your Account Manager or the Product Support team (help@patsnap.com) to get access.
• Once they give you access, you should receive an email with a link to the User Management page. 

 

 

2. Accessing User Management

Regardless if you have a license assigned to you or not, as an administrator you will be able to access the User Management page from the Admin Settings option in your account drop-down menu on the top-right of the landing page (You can find this at https://home.patsnap.com).

 

• Click on the "Admin Settings" box to be directed to the User Management tool. 

 

3. Add new users and assign product permissions

Once you are logged in and in User Management, you will see a list of any previously registered users of your company in a list on the landing page.

• The "Add New User" button can be found on the top-right hand corner in green.

 

 

• There are two ways to invite a user, by invitation link or by email.

 

 

• When creating an invitation link, select the roles and packages of the user. There are two types or roles: 1. General = user can't access user management, 2. Administrator = user can access user management. You will not be able to assign a package to the users if there are no seats left.
• Assign a package to the user. You will not be able to assign a package if there are no seats left for this package. Additionally, your packages will not appear unless you package is currently active. When you are sure of the permissions, click "Next".
• You will then be prompted to enter the domain name for the invitation link. This is to make sure that only users within your company request access. 
• When the new users click on this link they will enter their details (e.g: email address) and will automatically be assigned to the company.
• Keep in mind this link is only active for a period of 7 days.

 

 

• When creating an invite by email you can enter any email address (and domain) you may need. Assign the roles and packages necessary for these email addresses and press "Confirm".
• The new user will then receive an automated "Welcome to Patsnap" email which will allow them to activate their account. Please allow a few minutes for this email to arrive.

 

4. Changing password guidelines

You can also change the password reset guidelines for your company. To do this, click on the "Security" icon on the left handed side menu. Here, you can activate "Strong password". This will request all users to create a password which includes a combination of digits, uppercase and lowercase letters, special characters, and a minimum of 12 and a maximum of 32 character length. 

 

 

You can then set the password expiry after 30, 60, 90 or 180 days (or set to "No Change" if you don't want an automatic password expiry). After x amount of days set, all users will be requests to create a new password for their accounts which matches the above mentioned password guidelines.

 

 

User management actions

Automated package provisioning 

A menu on the left hand side named "Auto Provision" will enable you to decide the default package provision for newly registered users. You will also have an overview of the available seats left for each package.

 

 

Password resetting

If your colleague is having trouble with their password, there is a password reset function in User management to send an email with the new password reset link to them immediately.

• Click on the 3 dots "more actions" button on the right-hand side of user row to show the option to reset the password.

 

 

• Or, use the user tick box to select one or multiple users to show the action bar at the top of the page, which you can also reset passwords for multiple users from.

 

 

View company product package permissions and quota

Product package quotas are displayed at the top of the page to indicate the number of seats left for each package and are free to assign to users or are occupied. This allows you to allocate "seats" more efficiently.

• Available = Total - used
• Used = Number of users who have access to the product package
• Total = Number of product package "seats" purchased and stated in your product

 

Bulk editing user product package permissions

When selecting multiple users on the left hand side, a little menu will pop up, enabling multiple actions to be taken. One of them is to "Manage Permissions".

 

 

When clicking on "Manage Permissions", you will be prompted with a list of packages for which your can add, remove, or leave as is the packages for those selected users. The number of seats available will be displayed. You are not able to select "Add" if the number of seats aren't available.

 

 

Press "Confirm" to complete the package permission changes.

 

View user activity

Seats occupied by employees who have left or are no longer using the product greatly limits the value obtained from each license. Within User Management, there is a Last Login field which reveals when the user last logged into the platform (up to 2 months ago). 

• You can see when a user has logged in to the product from the "Last Login" field.
• Check this field is ticked under the "Field Settings" drop-down menu to ensure it is a displayed field.
• Note: This field shows login activity up until 2 months ago.

 

 

 

Assign administrator role to users

Assigning an administrator role to a colleague may be useful if you would like to give them the ability to manage the users with you, or you would like to transfer the responsibility to them. 

• To change the role of a user, go to "Edit User Detail". By changing a user role to admin, they have the ability to manage user details and permissions.
• Assign either General or Administrator role to the user - the Administrator role will give users access to User Management.
• This can be found via 3 dots "more action" button on the right-hand side of the user row

         OR

• By selecting the user tick box and clicking "Edit User Detail" in the action bar at the top of the page.

 

 

Delete users

There is an option to delete users who no longer work at your company. Deleting a user means they will no longer be able to access Patsnap and any product package permissions will be removed from their license and free to allocate to their users.

• Click on the 3 dots "more actions" button on the right-hand side of user row to show the option to delete user.

 

 

 

• Or, if you can use the user tick box to select one or multiple users to show the action bar at the top of the page, from which you can select to delete multiple users.

 

 

Removing product package permissions from a user

Go to "Edit User detail" via the 3 dots "more action" button and see the package field for the user.

• Switch off and remove package permissions from this box and hit Save

 

 

Default User Preferences

This menu allows you to set defaults for all new users added to your user list. Changing this will also affect all existing users.

 

• "Display Entry to Free Products" will enable users to see other products we may have where they can potentially sign up with a free account to try them out.
• "History" will allow the users to see, for examples, any of their previous searches made within Analytics or Eureka.
• "Download and Export Patents" will allow or disabled users to download any patents at will.
• "Comments in Workspace" will enable or disable users to make comments on a patent within a workspace.
• "Upload File" will enable or disable users to upload their own files to, for example, a workspace.

 

If you need any help, please contact help@patsnap.com.