This article explains how to manage user accounts in your Hudu environment, including technicians and portal users. User management covers creating and maintaining users, assigning abilities through user roles, and restricting access through security groups and password folders.
The Hudu admin area is accessible only to admin and super admin users in your organization.
Visit Groups & Restrictions and Password Folders for additional information on restricting user access.
User types
Hudu has three main types of users:
Includes the admin and super admin roles. Admin users can perform most actions in Hudu and access the admin area. They cannot be added to security groups.
Includes the spectator and editor roles. Permissions vary by role and can be further restricted through security groups and password folders.
Have read-only access to a single client portal at no extra cost. Portal users require unique login credentials and must be assigned to a client space with an active external share portal.
User roles
User roles determine what a user can do in your Hudu environment. Hudu has five user roles, each with a different level of documentation access.
As of Hudu 2.46, the Author and Editor roles are combined into a single Editor role, and Spectators can flag records.
Read-only access to a single client portal.
- Portal members are not licensed users, but they do require unique login credentials.
- Portal members must be assigned to a client space with an active external share portal.
Read-only access to your Hudu environment.
- Spectators can view your Hudu environment itself, not only the external share portal.
- Spectators can be given read-only access to all spaces or restricted through security groups.
- Spectators can flag records.
Able to write and archive, with access to some documentation tools.
- Editors can flag documentation and view expirations.
- Editors can be given access to all spaces or restricted through security groups.
- As of 2.46, Editors include all former Author abilities, such as writing and archiving to the museum.
Access to the admin area.
- Admins can access almost all areas of your Hudu environment and can delete information.
- Admins cannot be added to security groups.
Access to all features and areas.
- Super admins have full access to your Hudu environment and can export data out of it.
- Super admins cannot be added to security groups.
Guides
The sections below cover how to find, invite, manage, and archive users. Expand each section for step-by-step instructions.
The Users page, found at Admin > Users, lists everyone in your Hudu environment across three tabs:
- Internal: your licensed users.
- Bridge: Hudu Bridge users.
- Archived: users who have been archived.
The number next to each tab shows how many users it contains. Each user row shows the user's name, email, role, and last login.
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Click the Role dropdown below the search bar.
- Select the checkbox next to one or more roles: Admin, Editor, Spectator, or Super admin. You can also type in the dropdown's search field to find a role.
- The list updates to show only users with the selected roles. Clear the checkboxes to show all users again.
To find a specific user, type their name or email into the Search bar. Search and the Role filter can be used together.
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Click the Name, Email, Role, or Last login column header to sort the list by that column.
- Click the same header again to reverse the sort order.
The Last login column shows when each user last signed in to Hudu. Users who have never signed in show Never.
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Click the Last login column header to sort users by their most recent sign-in.
- Click the header again to reverse the order and bring the least recent sign-ins to the top.
Sorting by Last login is a quick way to find inactive accounts. Combine it with the Role filter to review inactive users in a specific role, then archive them in bulk to free up licenses.
Inviting users is limited to admin and super admin roles.
- Navigate to the Hudu admin area on your Hudu toolbar.
- Under Basic Setup, click Users.
- Click + Invite New Users.
- Enter the email address of each user you want to add, then click Add or press Enter.
- You can add multiple email addresses separated by commas, but all users added at the same time must have the same user role.
- Select a user role from the list.
- Finish user setup:
- For portal users, select the client space whose portal they will access. This is required.
- For spectators and editors, assign at least one security group.
- A default security group must be designated. New users are placed in this group automatically unless you choose otherwise.
- Click Invite User(s).
- Your Hudu HQ account must have enough available licenses to invite new users.
- If you have increased your license count in Hudu HQ but the new licenses are not showing in Hudu, force the license key to check against the billing server:
- Navigate to Admin > License Key.
- Click Change Key.
- Click Update.
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Find the user you want to edit, then click their name to open their details page.
- Click Edit in the top right corner.
- Update the user's name, email address, role, or avatar, then save your changes.
Resetting passwords is limited to admin and super admin roles.
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Find the user, then click their name to open their details page.
- Click Reset Password in the top right corner.
- Enter and confirm the new password.
- Click Update User.
Impersonation lets you see Hudu exactly as another user sees it.
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Find the user, then click their name to open their details page.
- Click Impersonate in the top right corner.
- A yellow banner appears in the bottom left corner of the screen to show that you are signed in as that user.
Admins and super admins cannot be impersonated.
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Click a user's name to open their summary page, which shows:
- The user's role
- When the user was created
- Whether they have 2FA enabled
- How many times they have signed in
- Leaderboard statistics
- Companies they interact with most
- Number of assets created, updated, and viewed
- Which security groups they belong to. You can edit group membership here or on the group's own page.
- If the user has not yet created their account, an Invitation pending message appears with a Resend Email Invitation button.
- Clicking Resend Email Invitation also displays a copyable link, so you can send the invitation another way.
Archiving users is limited to admin and super admin roles. Users are never deleted from Hudu, only archived, so your activity logs stay accurate. Archived technicians and portal users lose access to every environment they could previously access until they are unarchived.
Archiving a single user
- Navigate to Admin > Users.
- Find the user, then click their name to open their details page.
- Click Archive in the top right corner.
Bulk archiving users
- Navigate to Admin > Users and open the Internal tab.
- Select the checkbox next to each user you want to archive. To select every user on the page, use the checkbox in the table header.
- A toolbar appears at the bottom of the page showing how many users are selected.
- Click the Archive icon in the toolbar. Hover over the icon to see its label.
- Confirm the action if prompted.
Archived users move to the Archived tab. To clear your selection without archiving, click the X in the toolbar.
Sort by Last login to find users who haven't signed in recently or show Never, then select and archive them in bulk.
Tools
Security groups control what information your Hudu users can view. With security groups, you can:
- Restrict access to entire client spaces.
- Set when users in a group can be active in your environment using login schedules.
- Apply restrictions at two levels:
- By category, such as an entire asset layout or feature.
- By individual record, such as a single password, asset, or KB article.
Visit Groups & Restrictions for additional information on security groups.
Password folders organize passwords for your technicians and work with security groups to restrict folder access. A password folder can be set to one of the following:
-
Accessible to all users
- The folder has no restrictions and is available to all technicians.
- Individual passwords in an unrestricted folder can still be restricted from specific security groups.
-
Accessible to selected users
- Only the security groups you choose, plus admins and super admins, can view the folder.
Visit Password Folders for additional information on password folders.
FAQ
Answer: Go to Admin > Users and click the Last login column header to sort by most recent sign-in. Users who have never signed in show Never. You can narrow the list further with the Role filter.
Answer: Open your Hudu HQ Billing Portal dashboard and select My Billing > Access Billing Portal > Update Plan to change your license count. If you lower your license count without archiving the user, your Hudu environment will go into Limited Mode for exceeding the available license count. Archiving works like deleting the account while keeping your activity and audit logs accurate.
Answer: The user is likely the first account created in your environment, which Hudu treats as the owner account. Change the user's role to something other than super admin, and you will then be able to archive them.
Note: Once the original owner account is archived, the next super admin created becomes the owner account and cannot be archived until its role is changed.