Set Granular Permissions for Elastix Usage

Thanks to: https://community.spiceworks.com/

Introduction

So you've just installed Elastix in your environment? Great! But wait a minute...that means you the IT person have to do everything to administer the system moving forward. Now you are probably aren't as excited about it. And because we're talking open source software you just don't have many other options than to do things yourself, right? What if there was a way to allow certain key users permission to the system to perform certain duties without you having to be involved? If that sounds like something that would make your life easier, keep reading.

All steps below were performed on Elastix 2.4.0r2 (64-bit version) running as a VM.

Steps (7 total)

1

Login to Elastix

Visit the address of your Elastix server in a web browser, and login with your administrative credentials.

2

Navigate to the User Management Area

The first thing you see should of course be the dashboard. That is the heart beat of your system. Once you see that things are running smoothly as expected, click the Users menu to get started.

3

So What Needs to Happen First?

Once you enter the user management area, you will be taken straight to the user list. From here you can create a new user if you want, but let's not do it just yet. On the left, you should see two other options. One is Groups, and the other is Group Permissions.

So, much like with AD management, we want to create a group first, assign the group some permissions, and then add users to our group. Click the Groups menu to get started with group creation.

4

Creating the Group

Once you reach the Groups menu, click the button to Create New Group. You can name the group whatever you want and give it a description.

For purposes of example, I am going to create a group to give users who are members access to the CDR Report, Graphic Report, and Summary from the Reports menu. I don't want them to be able to anything but view these reports. We will name the group CallReportUsers.

Once you have the name of the group and the description set, click Save. You should then be taken directly to the Group List and be able to see the group you just created (as shown in the attached screenshot).

5

Setting the Permissions

From the Group List area, you will still see the Group Permissions option on the left-hand side (as seen in screen shot from previous step). Click that option to begin assigning permissions to the group that was just created.

From the Group Permissions menu, click the button that says Show Filter. You will then see the list of available Groups that have been created. Choose the CallReportUsers group, and click the Show button. You will now notice the filter has been applied to show only permissions applicable to the Group CallReportUsers group. By default no areas within the Elastix interface are set as accessible for members of the group.

Now, we have to find the three options we discussed in step 4 above (CDR Report, Graphic Report, and Summary) and select these options to allow the group we created access to them. Click Save Selected as Accessible once those three options have been selected.

WARNING: There are 4 pages of options here, so if you select several items on a page, click Save Selected as Accessible before you proceed to the next page.

6

Adding Users

After saving the options that you want to be accessible for members of the group, click the Users menu on the left-hand side. Click the Create New User button to begin adding a new user.

The login is the username that can be used to access the Elastix web interface. The name is the full name of the person who will use this login. Set a password for access to the web interface, and select the group to which the user belongs. In our case, it is CallReportUsers. You can also map this login to the user's extension, but that is normally only something you would want to do if granting access to the built in operator panel. After you click save, the new user will be created and appear in the user list.

Repeat this process for any subsequent users you wish to add.

7

Check Your Work

The time has come to see if you did everything correctly. Login to the Elastix web interface using the login and password you set in step 6. As you can see from the screenshot, the user can only see 3 options from the Reports menu - CDR Report, Graphic Report, and Summary.

NOTE:
If you're missing an option when you login as the user in this step, it may be that you missed one of the permissions needed for the group in step 5. Go back and make sure that you have given the group access to the submenu of your choice as well as the top level menu. In this particular example, this was not a problem because everything was directly inside the Reports menu. But if we had wanted to grant access to things like sending faxes, user management, or something else, we would have needed to be more careful with our selections and checked for submenus and top level menus when assigning permissions to the group.