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Machine-user management (MUM)

A machine user is a user who signs in to and performs operations on a machine. The user may be a cashier, a driver, or have another role. The machine-user management feature in Connect provides a centralized way to handle machine users.

Note

  • You access Machine users from the Connect navigation pane ADMINISTRATION > Machine users

  • You need to be an administrator to have access to ADMINISTRATION.

Machine-user IDs are unique within each tenant. Attempting to add a second machine user with an existing ID in the database will result in an error message.

Machine-exclusive user groups

When you create a machine, a unique user group is automatically generated for that machine. This user group is exclusive to the machine and cannot be associated with any other machine.

Note

The machine-exclusive groups are equivalent to direct user and machine assignments in Connect1/CCC.

When machine-user management is enabled, adding a user to a machine automatically assigns them to the machine’s exclusive user group.

Important

  • The mandatory machine-exclusive user group is automatically created when you create a machine.

  • It's not possible to remove the machine-exclusive user group.

You can't change the name of the machine-exclusive user group or add other machines to the group.

For security reasons, there are strict limitations to what you can do with machine users. The only changes you can make to machine-exclusive user groups are adding and removing machine users.

For every machine, machine users have a version state represented by an integer starting from 1. Every change to machine users causes the system to bump the version number by 1. This number is the machine-user version. We store as many user versions as there are machines in the system.

When a machine is synchronized with Connect, the machine-user version is synchronized as well. The machine-user version is only updated by Connect. If you add or remove a user in Connect on-Device, the machine sends an update to Connect and then Connect bumps the machine-user version. Connect on-Device gets the latest version from Connect on each response to every heartbeat.

For machine users, there are two types of communication between the machine and Connect:

  • Synchronization — The machine and Connect compare machine-user versions, and the machine users are updated to the latest version.

  • Transactions — The machine sends data to Connect including information about the machine user.

Adding

You can add users to the machine-exclusive user group or any custom user group from the Connect user interface or the API.

Use Upload users.xml to upload multiple users from a Connect on-Device-compatible .xml file, such as a backup file, or to synchronize users in Connect with Connect on-Device users.

Here you can see an example of a users.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<users version="189" serverId="CCC-pcmo-515f9b99-e633-4a4b-9511-
5d379ee13cac">
<user login="998" password="31ctwfH9lJ0NM" name="Whatever" role="maintenance" doors="123,786"/>
<user login="999" password="cneiu48jfrhbh" name="Whatever" role="cashier" doors="123"/>
</users>

Important

  • Don't change the formatting of the users.xml file.

  • The user names must contain only alphanumeric characters (letters A–Z and digits 0–9). Using other symbols may cause the machine to get locked.

  • When adding user names, this is correct:

    "John Smith" (single space between the given name and the surname).

  • When adding user names, this is incorrect: "John\tSmith" or "John&amp;amp;#09;Smith" or "John  Smith" (tab).

When you add users by importing a users.xml file, there are some things you must be aware of:

  • Users who already exist in Connect are users with the same userID as users in the users.xml file.

  • Importing users via users.xml ALWAYS updates machine users that already exist in the system if the properties in the XML file are different from the existing users.

  • If you leave Force user properties update cleared (default), properties that are missing in the users.xml but exist in Connect are retained.

  • If you select Force user properties update, the properties of machine users in Connect are replaced with the properties in the users.xml file. Properties present in Connect but missing in users.xml are wiped out, that is, set to NULL or 0 if integer.

  • You can't have duplicate machine-user logins. If you do, the upload fails.

Here's an example of users.xml file entries that will cause the upload to fail:

<user login="123456" password="" name="Amelia Smith" identifier="" role="1_Cashier" ..... />
<user login="123456" password="" name="Brandon Jones" identifier="" role="1_StoreManager" ..... />

Important

Properties present in both XML and Connect are always updated when you import users via users.xml. That is, the values from the users.xml file always overwrite the values in Connect.

If you add a machine user from Connect on-Device, the user is included in the machine-exclusive user group. It isn't possible to add a machine user from Connect on-Device if that user already exists in Connect but isn't attached to the machine. If you attempt to do this, Connect deletes the user on the machine.

Deleting

From the Connect user interface or API, you can permanently delete a machine user. In this case, the machine user is irrevocably deleted from the system. This means that the machine user is deleted from all machine/user groups. This action can't be undone.

You can delete machine users from Connect on-Device but this can only be done successfully if the user only belongs to the machine-exclusive user group. If the user is attached to any other user group, deletion from Connect on-Device will not succeed.

Single-tenant machine-user management (MUM)

The purpose of single-tenant MUM is to allow several identical machine-user IDs on the same tenant. A typical use case would be a large tenant with many different sub-tenants that are unaware of each other. In this case, there is a considerable risk that some of the sub-tenants' machine users have identical machine-user IDs. In this case, Connect identifies unique machine users with the use of machine-user groups.

When single-tenant MUM is enabled, a machine user can only belong to one single machine-user group. If you move a machine user to a new group, that machine user is detached from the previous group.

You can't connect a machine to two different machine-user groups containing machine users with identical IDs. When a machine is added to a machine-user group, Connect checks if there are identical machine-user IDs in the groups. If there are identical machine-user IDs, it is not possible to add the machine, and an error message is shown.

If you want to set up, for instance, a maintenance group with access to a machine that belongs to a machine-user group. In that case, you must make sure that the IDs of the maintenance users aren't identical to the IDs of the machine users in the machine-user group.

Single-tenant MUM is enabled when the tenant is created. Once single-tenant MUM has been enabled, it isn't possible to switch the tenant to the default MUM functionality.

Importing and moving machine users and machines

  • You can import up to 10,000 machine users in a single XML import operation.

    If you need to import a larger number of machine users, you must split them into several files and import them separately.

  • You can move up to 5,000 machine users to or from a machine-user group in a single operation

    If you need to move a larger number of machine users across groups, you must perform the move in several operations.

  • You can move up to 300 machines to or from a machine-user group in a single operation.

    If you need to move a larger number of machines across groups, you must perform the move in several operations.

See also

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