AN-FSE-NDS-1-277-C: OpenLab CDS Workstation Basics

Control Panel UI and Admin Exercise

Purpose
• Get familiar with Control Panel User interface
• Know how to configure Authentication, Security Policy, Users, Groups, and Roles

Exercise 1 – OpenLab Control Panel User interface

1. Double click the OpenLab Control Panel desktop icon to launch the Control Panel. This
will open the Control Panel login screen.
2. Navigate the 3 views: Administration, Instruments, Projects

Refer to the Control Panel section in OpenLab Help & Learning to review the Control Panel
User Interface.

Instrument Controllers

3. In Administration view, select Instrument Controllers.

4. What is the name of the instrument controller(s) listed? ______________________
5. Select each icon:
• Ping Instrument Controller: verify the availability of the instrument controller
• Create Report: Report the settings/characteristics of the instrument controller
• View Logs: the logs are shown that can be saved. Logs are needed for
troubleshooting problems with the system.

System Activity Log

6. Select the System Activity Log and review the System Activity log user interface.

Filters help in locating desired log entries

The System Activity Log logs all actions occurring in the control panel:

• System errors and warnings

• Login/logout of users

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• Failed login attempts

• User account lock
• User, group and role creation, edition and deletion
• Instrument/location creation edition and deletion
• Instrument activity

Each entry of the logbook indicates when, who and what has been done. Filters help to recover
a specific log.

Diagnostics

The Diagnostic page includes Version information, Installed Components, and server and local
logs.

1. Control Panel > Administration > Diagnostics. Zip and send application log files by going
to Local Log Files and Click Select All.

2. Click Save Logs

The OpenLab CDS Install summary log (Version and Installed components) created by
the Installer is shown as part of the Control Panel in the Diagnostic tool.

The different logs (from the local computer or the server) can be zipped and sent for
evaluation or saved.

Exercise 2 – Authentication
Resource: OpenLab CDS Workstation with Content Management guide

Authentication provider determines how users access the CDS system. When Internal
Authentication is selected, a list of users and their passwords are built into the shared services
database in the CDS and setup via OpenLab Control Panel.

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1. Select Administration > System Configuration

2. The authentication provider is “Internal”

Can you create users in Control Panel when Window Domain authentication is used? ____

Note: For Windows Domain authentication, users/groups are imported.

Exercise 3 – Security Policy

Refer to Configure Security Policy in CDS_WorkstationGuidePlus.pdf to set the security policy

1. Under Security Policies, you may set the:

• Minimum password length
• Password expiration period
• Maximum number of allowed unsuccessful login attempts
• Account lock time - If a user exceeds the maximum unsuccessful number of login
attempts, the account will be frozen for this number of minutes.
• Lock User Interface time - If the session is inactive for more that this number of
minutes the system will be locked. Setting to 0 turns this feature off.

2. Set the inactivity time before locking the application to 1.

3. From Control Panel, select Help and select Administration

4. Under “Set Security Policies”, What is the function of “Account lock time (minutes)”?
____________________

For remaining of the exercise, set the inactivity timeout to 10.

Exercise 4 – Users, Groups, and Roles

Refer to Help and Learning (How To > OpenLab CDS > Control Panel > Administration)

Use Case: Admin left company. What do I do to avoid losing admin access to system?

1. A system administrator account was created during installation. As a safeguard, create

a second administrator account.
2. In Control Panel > Administration, select Users > Create User

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3. Enter the Name (ID) admin2, Password admin, Full name, and uncheck “User must
change password at next logon” and check “Password never expires”.
3. Why is it important to create more than one administrator account? __________

4. Select Role Membership and select Everything. Select OK.

User Case 1: I have a small lab with few users, I decide to assign roles to users individually.

1. Create 3 users and record PW for each user and assign a Role:
Chem1, PW = chem1; never expires; Role Membership is Chemist
Lab Manager1, PW admin; never expires; Role Membership is Project Administrator
Tech1, PW tech1; never expires; Role Membership is Technician

Use Case 2: My lab is growing, and I decide to use Groups to make my user role administration
easier. (I use temporary workers and I want minimal administration of these workers)

1. Create the following users and record the PW:

Operator1, PW = oper1
Operator2, PW = oper2;
Chem2, PW = chem2
Temp1, PW = temp1
2. Create the following Groups: Technicians, Chemists.
3. Add the Tech1, Operator1 and Operator2 to Technicians Group
4. Add Chem1 and Chem2 to the Chemists Group
5. Assign role Technician to the Technicians group
6. Assign role Chemist to the chemist’s group
7. Select Roles. Review the Technician role to see what a technician can do by default.
8. Close Control Panel and Log in as Tech1.
9. Can Tech1 start an Instrument? ______
10. What role is needed to start an Instrument? ___________________
11. Only the admin and admin2 have privileges to update users. Log in as admin.
12. What Role Membership would allow a user to start an instrument? ________________
13. Go to Groups, select the Technicians and Chemists Groups, edit group, select Role
Membership and add a role for running instruments.
14. Log back in as Tech1. Can Tech1 launch and run an instrument?

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15. Verify if operator2 can run an instrument

16. If Tech1 forgets their PW, what steps can be done to create a new password?
17. I am adding a Temporary Worker, Temp1, what do I need to do so that he can work like
my other technicians?

Use Case 3: I want to grant “Create and modify acquisition method” to Operator1 but don’t want
this user to have the Chemist role.

1. In the Chemist role, the following privilege is granted, “Create and modify acquisition
method”. If you wanted to give Operator1 this extra privilege, what could you do?
2. Go to Roles and select create Role. Name the role: Create and modify acquisition
method.
3. Go to acquisition method section and select the “Create and modify acquisition method”
check box. Select OK.

4. A new role is created and can be added to Operator1 user.

5. Go to Users and select Operator1 and select “Create and modify acquisition method” to
add to Operator1 privileges. This way you add only this privilege/permission to one user
and not the entire group.
6. Check if Operator1 can modify a method and repeat with Operator2. Can Operator2
modify a method?

Summary: if you want to grant an extra privilege to a member of a group, you can assign an
extra role to a specific user.

Where can I go to find out my group and role membership?

1. From Control Panel, select My Settings

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2. A summary for the user currently logged into the control panel is available. User
information and group/role memberships are shown.

This option is only available when using Authentication Modes (Windows Domain, Internal,
ECM). This information cannot be edited when using domain authentication as the
information is hosted from the domain controller.

Exercise 5 - Managing user access to Projects

As a contract lab manager, I do not want users who work on HP’s projects/instruments to see
FMC’s projects/instruments, and vice versa.

By default, permissions are inherited from the group node for each Project.

The first step in limiting user access to projects (Folders) is to break the inheritance from the
‘top’ level Projects group .

In the exercise the Inherited Permissions will be disabled for the FMC project to specify
permissions that are different from the group.

1. Create two project groups: FMC and HP and create 1 or 2 projects under each group as
shown in below picture.

Chemists only has access to HP; Technicians only has access to FMC.

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2. Select the Project Group, FMC then select Edit Privileges button to break privilege
inheritance from the parent Projects group .

3. Uncheck the Inherit privileges from parent checkbox.

4. The Specify privileges dialog box is shown

5. Select Keep confirming that you would like to copy all privileges from the parent to this
object which includes the users and groups.
6. Select Chem1 and Chem2 users and the Chemists Group and select Remove User or
Group button.
7. Select OK.
8. Repeat these same steps for HP but remove Tech1, Tech2, operator1&2 users and the
Technician Group from HP. Chem1 is the user allowed to access HP projects.
9. Close Control Panel and restart it.
10. Login is as Tech1.
11. Does Tech1 have access to the HP project? ______________

Note: If Remove was selected from the Specify privileges dialog box, all the assigned users and
groups are cleared. This gives the option to add only the user(s) and group(s) needing access.

Exercise 6 - Delete a CDS Project

Refer to OpenLab Help & Learning for additional information about Projects

1. Create a Project called Gray

2. Start an instrument pointing to the Gray project and make a single run.
3. Close Acq and DA.
4. Delete Project “Gray” from Control Panel.

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5. Go to CM web UI using the content browser, what do you see? Is your data still present
in the Gray project?

Take away: deleting the project from Control Panel only deletes the pointer, it will not delete the
folder directory “Gray” in the designated storage path or the contents of the project.

Next step: The project was deleted by mistake and we will create it and point to the existing
project folder in CM.

1. In Control Panel, click create project and enter the project name, Gray or use a different
name.
2. In the project folder path, click browse and select the existing Gray folder. Click OK.

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