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Limiting users and Admin Mode

 

Applies to

Sensoft Multiline 1.1.1 and later
Sensoft Vision 1.6.6 and later

 

Question

Is there a way to prevent users from stopping measurements? Or from changing the criteria that determine if a spool is a PASS or a FAIL? The regulation mandates that the user cannot change such criteria.

 

Answer

Yes, in Sensoft you can restrict what regular users can do. Press Ctrl - A or select Edit|Admin Mode from the menu bar to enter Admin mode. A new page Admin appears (see Figure 1), or, if your Admin settings are already protected by a password, you are asked for the password first.

Figure 1: The Admin page is visible only when you are in Admin mode. You can select which actions to disallow in normal mode.

On page Admin you can mark which action to disallow for regular users. The actions remain possible in Admin mode. For example, if you put a checkmark near Start all/Stop all in the Disallow field and change back to User Mode (by pressing Ctrl - A), the Start all button will be disabled, visible by its grayed out state.

Like all settings, also Admin settings have to be saved so that they can be loaded after a restart.

Admin Mode can be protected by a password. To set or change it click on the Change password... button on the Admin page. When you save the settings only a cryptographic hash of your password is written to the settings file, so that if someone reads the settings file, he cannot determine the password.

If you've automatised your measurements (by OPC UA, Digital Inputs or Database), you can interdict any impact of the user on the measurements. The following represents the highest security method, which should even prevent a malicious user from manipulating the measurements:

  1. Change to Admin mode, by pressing Ctrl - A
  2. Disallow everything and enable Automatic startup, i.e. put a checkmark at every element on the page
  3. Set a password, by pressing the Change password... button
  4. Save the settings over the file Default config.ini, so that they are loaded when the app is started.
  5. Exit Admin mode, by pressing Ctrl - A
  6. In Windows, remove Write access to that file for the relevant user accounts. This prevents that a user opens the setting file in a text editor and clears the password.

If you forgot the password:

  • Open the settings file in a text editor. The settings file to open is the last you loaded or saved, normally located in Documents\LabVIEW Data\Sensoft\Config Data\Configurations Multiline (or Configurations Vision if you are using Sensoft Vision). If you did not load or save any settings, open Default config.ini in that directory.
  • Find the line starting with Disallow.Encrypted password =
  • Replace the line with Disallow.Encrypted password = ""  and save the file
  • Load the settings file in Sensoft, or if loading is disabled, restart Sensoft. The password is cleared.