Improved Vault Users & Groups Managment

[Andrew1307]

As it currently stands it is not possible to delete users and groups within Autodesk Vault. 

This is a problem. I understand Autodesk's stance on that the users need to be retained for historical reasons, however the management side of things needs to be improved. 

For example I created a group and users that were never used. Why can't I delete them? Objects that were never used should be allowed to be deleted. Also as the database grows and users are hired and terminated, the list will grow to an unmanageable mess.

What has happened to me is that I am in the middle of implementing Vault for my company. When I first set it up I created users. However, since then we have switched to a Domain and have now imported the Domain users and groups to use. Now I have groups and users that have never been used that I have no way of deleting or using for anything else. 

I have found blogs and forum posts suggesting that users be diabled and renamed so that they are sorted appropriately. This is a hack solution at best and not a real solution to the problem. 

As I see it two things need to happen:

1. Unused users and groups need to be allowed to be deleted. 

2. There needs to be additional options and sorting methods for used users and groups that are no longer active. ie. Once they are disabled they are moved to a different list and only retained for historical purposes. 

[Kevin_Gallagher]

the ability to delete users/groups is a must. If uses and groups can not be deleted can they be moved to de-clutter the list of active users and groups

[ilotey]

I suggest offering a setting at user creation time of "Read-Only" user.  "Read-only" users would be just that and could never make changes in Vault.  Vault should allow easy deleting of Read-Only designated users.

Read-only user could be promoted to read-write user but never back to read-only user.

It seems this ideastation was accepted but never went anywhere.  I will create a new ideastation request for this specific idea.

[ilotey]

I suggest offering a setting at user creation time of "Read-Only" user.  "Read-only" users would be just that and could never make changes in any Vault on a server.  Vault Server should allow easy deleting of Read-Only designated users.

Read-only user could be promoted to read-write user but never back to read-only user.

Further to this, if implemented, it would be handy if Vault Server could scan existing users for changes against Vault records.  If no records are found those users should be flagged as read-only and be deletable.

Deleting read-only Vault users is a desired functionality for companies using AD logins where turnover is high in positions where employees require read-only access to Vaulted documents.

[mschindler-mum]

Hi @ilotey,

your idea is interesting but, so far as I know, that is not possible to delete any user or group in Vault.

That is because, when an user or group is used for any document, as it exist for numbering schemes for documents, and in my eyes it doesn't make any sence to have it as a feature.

Why you need "read-only" users?

You can configure a group with the rights/users with rules or when needed create a new rule (possible since Vault 2019 RTM), and use this group for your users.

With the Vault Thinclient (Vault-Professional) you have the possibility only to use it as read-only, besides you have Vault-Office licenses (network only), then you can use it with read-write permissions.

I hope this way is helpful, until we get it possibly implemented in the future.

Many thanks,

Kind regards,

Matthias Schindler
CAD/CAM/PDM technical specialist at

[ihayesjr]

In addition, you can assign a user the Document Consumer role which only gives them read-only permissions.

[ilotey]

My intention is to provide an idea to facilitate the deletion of old, read-only users from Vault.  I am aware that there exist various ways to limit users to be read-only to Vault data, but this is not my point. 

To maintain data integrity, Vault/SQL does not allow users to be deleted once created.  If I could create a user as read-only, then Vault/SQL could be assured that deleting the user would not break anything in the database.  This would have to be handled in a way that the user cannot flip-flop between read-write and read-only.  It would be OK if, once created, the read-only flag could not be changed.

This would allow admins to clean-up often lengthy lists of disabled and obsolete Vault users.  Refer to this idea: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/vault-ideas/improved-vault-users-amp-groups-managment/idi-p/5044316