Introducing Technician access level in VRM

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Barbara (Victron Energy) asked 5 days ago

Introducing Technician access level in VRM

Just released in VRM is ‘Technician’ access level on a site. This access level allows for controlling a site similar as full access users could before. What’s more, technicians can see a site’s diagnostics data, carry out firmware updates and control devices linked to the site. The difference between technicians and site admins will come from three restrictions: technicians cannot delete a site, replace the GX device linked to a site, nor can they edit other user’s access to the site.

The technician role is perfect for sharing a site with users that should be able to troubleshoot and perform maintenance on a system, without risks of making administrative changes that cannot be made undone.

The previous ‘non-full-access’ user is now replaced by a ‘user’ role. The access of this type of user is unaffected by these changes.

In providing this new access level, we are taking the first step to more granular access to VRM. In the future, we would like to facilitate you to set permissions specifically per user linked to a site.

To change a user’s access to technician, head to the user settings of your site in VRM. You will find a dropdown next to each user with the choices ‘user’, ‘technician’ and ‘admin’. On top of the user table, you can click on the 'i' icon to refer to a list of actions and whether a user role is allowed to that action in VRM.

Any feedback on this feature is more than welcome, to improve access levels in VRM even more.

Note: To test the technician role, please don't change your current admin user to technician, as you won't be able as a technician to give yourself admin rights again.

VRM fleet management access access level user roles

screenshot-2024-06-12-at-193407.png (104.5 KiB)

screenshot-2024-06-12-at-193623.png (58.0 KiB)

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andrii-podanenko commented · 2 days ago

Thank you.

This is helpful by definition.

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Modifications Space

Node Red Space

Answer 1 · 2024-06-12T18:04:46Z

rpsmith answered · 5 days ago

I changed my Current Connected user access to Tech instead of Admin and now I can't change it to anything else! Looks like a software bug to me!

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · 5 days ago

Hi @rpsmith,

In order to change the account role you need to be logged in as the Admin user.

A technician cannot change their role, they need the admin user to do it.

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ramatt Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · 5 days ago

Is there a mechanism that prevents the last Admin on a site from changing their own role and soft-locking the VRM installation? If not I'd strongly recommend rolling back this change until something similar is implemented, otherwise I expect an uptick in support requests which could be easily avoided (mainly from end-user admins).

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ ramatt commented · 5 days ago

Hi @Ramatt ,

As you describe it is not possible to change the last Admin. That action is blocked.

Each site maintains at least one Admin.

One improvement that will be made is that if a user tries to change their own role from Admin to another role, we will add an additional confirmation step that warns them that they will not be able to change it back without help from the other Admin.

But if they are the only admin then VRM won’t allow the change at all.

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rpsmith Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · 4 days ago

I just tried it again and I can now change that account to user or admin. I was not able to do that yesterday even though I was logged in as Admin.

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Answer 2 · 2024-06-12T23:42:05Z

neptuneuk answered · 5 days ago

@Barbara (Victron Energy) I invited myself as a 'Technician' user (new unique email address) in to my personal installation.

Invite received and accepted.

Created new user details.

##No activation email received for new user account##

Technician user has been added to inviting installation and is visible in user list.

Technician user unable to log in to VRM as account not activated.

Unable to delete Technician user from inviting installation (when logged in as admin - see image) as it states there must be at least 1 full control user??

Needs to be a way to resend activation (not invite) email.

Admin should be able to delete any user that is a 'Technician' or 'User' regardless of activation status from their installation

What now?

vrmtechuserissue.png (30.7 KiB)

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · 5 days ago

Hi @NeptuneUK,

Your new user doesn't need to create their account from the email. They can register their account here - https://vrm.victronenergy.com/register

As long as it is registered with the same email address then it will be recognised.

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neptuneuk Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · 5 days ago

Hi @Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ,

I understand that, but I wanted to follow the new 'Technician' user flow.

The installation email invite contains a link to create a user if you dont already have a VRM account. I wanted a 'Tech User' to use in the future.

The invite email contains links to the registration site:

_{Create your own VRM account and access the VRM NB-Marion site by visiting this link:

https://vrm.victronenergy.com/register/invite/[TOKENHERE]?type=site

If you already have a VRM account, please accept your personal invitation by visiting the following link:

https://vrm.victronenergy.com/login/invite/[TOKENHERE]?type=site}

1.) I used the 'Create your own' link in the email.

2.) I created a new user.

3.) I did NOT get an activation email.

4.) I could NOT register the same user (see 2 above) as the email address was already registered.

5.) I could NOT login at https://vrm.victronenergy.com as the now registered user (see 2 above) had not activated the account (see 3 above).

6.) I logged in to my VRM Installation as the Installation admin user.

7.) I could see the 'Technician' user that I had invited (see screen shot from my previous post).

8.) I could not delete the invited 'Technician' user from my installation (see screen shot from previous post).

9.) As the invited 'Technician' user I was NOT able to request a new activation email for the 'Technician' user I had created (see 2 and 3 above). Ergo not activation, no ability to log in to VRM (see 5 above).

Without the activation email I assume I am unable to verify the created account, and therefore I am denied access to the VRM. See image.

The invite 'Email' recipient and the 'Technician' email address that was registered are identical (hence see 9 above and image).

On a more positive note:

Now when logged in as my installation admin user, I can now see the 'Technician' user but also with the ability to change the user type (not available previously, see my previous post image)

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vrmtechuserissue2.png (41.7 KiB)

vrmtechuserissue3.png (31.7 KiB)

Answer 3 · 2024-06-14T08:13:41Z

maa answered · 4 days ago

Cool, great idea !

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Answer 4 · 2024-06-14T08:34:03Z

diederik answered · 4 days ago

Shouldn't there be a warning when an admin downgrades himself to technician?

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Guy Stewart (Victron Community Manager) ♦♦ commented · 4 days ago

Yes, I have the feature request in with the team and it will be coming soon.

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Answer 5 · 2024-06-17T09:54:17Z

rr-engineering answered · yesterday

This is great, thanks for that improvement. This will be very useful to give to advanced users that want to tinker but it should stop them getting onto real trouble. Your future concept of allowing selection of features available to the user is also a good one.

For my less advanced ESS users it would be great to get access to scheduled charging and grid setpoint in the VRM. Those are really the only two settings they want to fiddle with and this would mean they would not have to delve into the remote console.

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Answer 6 · 2024-06-17T16:06:04Z

kyros32 answered · 20 hours ago

Hello everyone,

I would like to report a bug with "Technician" user access level - when group is selected, user can not see "Realtime" updates in VRM. Basically like if VRM could not connect to site. You never (or sporadically) see "Real time" - only 1 minute ago for example.

Regards,

kyros32

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Barbara (Victron Energy) ♦ commented · 5 hours ago

Hi @kyros32 , thank you for alerting us. What do you mean with 'when group is selected'?

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kyros32 Barbara (Victron Energy) ♦ commented · 4 hours ago

@Barbara (Victron Energy) Hello Barbara, I simly meant when this access group/access level is selected. I don’t know, which terminology we are using, but I was referring to rights/access level/access group “Technician”.

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