Editing a user

A common task that administrators undertake is editing an existing user profile and changing details, such as their password or e-mail. The first step is to use the filters to search for the user that you want to edit.

Searching for a user account

1. Navigate to Administration | Site-Administration | Users | Accounts | Browse list of users.
2. Type the user's name or portion of their name into the User full name field:

   

3. Click on Add filter. This will display the list of users that have the text in their full name.
4. To edit the user account, click on the cogwheel icon to the right-hand side of the user record. This brings up the user account editing page, as follows:

   

Editing the user account

This process is the same for an administrator editing a user account and a user editing their own account with some exceptions not being available to the end user.

The administrator can change the username, authentication method, and password for a user, using the following options. Be sure to notify the user of any changes:

It is good practice to force the user to change their own password after you issue them one, and this can be achieved by ticking the Force password change checkbox.

It is also possible to suspend the user account, which stops them from logging in, by ticking the Suspended account checkbox.

The administrator can then change any of the normal account details that a user can configure, including:

• First name
• Surname
• Email address
• Email display
• Email format
• Email digest type
• Forum auto-subscribe
• Forum tracking
• When editing text
• Screen Reader
• City/town
• Country
• Timezone
• Preferred language
• Description
• User Picture
• Interests

There are also the optional fields that include:

• Web Page
• ICQ number
• Skype ID
• AIM ID
• Yahoo ID
• MSN ID
• ID number
• Institution
• Department
• Phone
• Mobile Phone
• Address

If you added any custom profile fields, they will appear on this editing page as well.

Tip

Custom profile fields are extra fields that an administrator can add to all user account profiles. These can be used for organization-specific information, such as managers' name, office location, or emergency contact information, and can be hidden from others looking at the profile.

After completing the editing, click on the Update profile button to save all changes.