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Users and Security

Adapted from the Pulse Dashboard Administrator Guide (PDF, December 2020).

Access in Pulse Dashboard is set per user, and it goes further than which modules someone opens: you decide report by report whether they may add it to their screens, change its setup and change its filters. This page covers adding a user, what each right allows, and how an administrator works on someone else's screens.

Before you start: administrator mode

The User Control button and the full Administration menu appear only when administrator mode is enabled. Turn it on from Administration → Enable Administration Mode and enter the administrator password. It can be enabled or disabled at any workstation, and it is separate from whether a user is flagged as an Admin in User Control.

Starting Pulse Dashboard on the server often produces a message that the Windows account you logged in with — frequently Administrator — is not authorized to use Pulse Dashboard. That is normal: Pulse Dashboard recognizes the Windows login, and that account does not need to be a Pulse Dashboard user. Acknowledge the message, enable administrator mode, and change Login as to a user who holds Admin rights.

The administrator password has no backstop

The default was provided when Pulse Dashboard was installed. If your company changes it, support does not have the new one and there is no master password. Resetting it requires a SQL script run against the database, so access to SQL Server or SQL Management Studio has to be available. More than one person in the company should know it.

Adding a user

  1. Click User Control on the right of the screen.
  2. Select the user from the dropdown to the left of the Add button, then click Add. If they are not in the list, use Manual Entry from the Add button and enter the domain and username.
  3. Fill in their first and last name, and assign a user group if you use groups.
  4. Decide whether they get Publisher and Admin.
  5. On the right of the screen, select the modules they may use. Expand a module with the + sign and select the individual reports.
  6. If they will use the Financial module, or the Current Balances or G/L Control reports in the Executive module, use G/L Account Security to add the accounts they may see. This applies to Macola® only.
  7. Add a password in the field at the top if they need one to enter Pulse Dashboard.
  8. Click Save.

What the two rights mean

Right What it allows
Publisher Push a tab of reports directly onto other users' screens. Different from Save and Share, which offers a tab that the recipient then adds themselves
Admin The Administration menu and every company-wide setting: calendar, MRP dates, default screens, software and licence updates, the administrator password, and column captions

What the report checkboxes mean

Checkbox What it allows
Edit Settings Add this report to their screens and change its setup with the red wrench icon. Without it they cannot add the report at all — though they can still add a copy someone has shared with them
Change Filter Add, change and delete filters on that report using the funnel icon

Lock All User Settings, at the top of the screen, is the blunt instrument: it removes the Executive and Settings menus and the setup and filter icons on every report header, so that user changes nothing.

User groups

Create a group from the User Group tab in User Control: Create New User Group, add a description, then select the modules and reports members will reach. One rule matters more than the rest — where a user belongs to a group, the group's settings take precedence over rights assigned to that user individually.

Copying rights and screens between users

Four buttons along the bottom of User Control save a great deal of clicking, and they do two different jobs:

Buttons What they copy
Copy User Settings / Paste User Settings The tabs and reports themselves — the screens the user works with
Copy User Security / Paste User Security The access rights: modules, reports and G/L accounts

Select the user to copy from, click Copy, select the user to copy to, click Paste.

Working on someone else's screens

With administrator mode enabled, the Login as dropdown at the top right switches the display to any user defined in Pulse Dashboard. You see exactly what they see, and you can fix a report for them from your own desk.

One rule decides whether your work survives, because settings are written when a user logs out: the other person has to log out of Pulse Dashboard before you do. If you are logged in as them and log out first, your changes go with you.

The activity log

View User Activity Log, on the left of the User Control screen, reports what each user has been doing in Pulse Dashboard. It is the way to see whether the licences you are paying for are being used, and who to offer help to.

Adding Pulse Dashboard to a workstation

  1. From the workstation, browse the network to the server folder where Pulse Dashboard is installed.
  2. Find PulseDashboardClient.exe, right-click it and choose Send To → Desktop.

Three things to avoid, all of which cause errors or break updates: do not use PulseDashboard.exe for a workstation, do not use a copy of either program found on the workstation's own C: drive, and do not pin PulseDashboard.exe to the Windows task bar.

Whitelist the client on each workstation

Workstations update themselves the next time Pulse Dashboard starts, invisibly and quickly. Anti-virus software sometimes reads Pulse Dashboard Client.exe as a threat and quarantines it, which leaves Pulse Dashboard unusable. Ask your IT group to add an exception for it on every workstation. The program sits under the user's own profile — C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Leahy\PulseDashboard — and the same applies to terminal servers and other remote access.

The user security worksheet

The Administrator Guide ends with a chart of every module and the reports inside it, with columns for Edit Settings? and Change Filter?. Printing it and sending it to department supervisors, then entering what comes back, is a faster way to set up a new user than deciding each report yourself.

Module Reports
Executive A/P Aging · A/R Aging · A/R Recap (Progression only) · Current Balances · Customer Orders Chart · Customer Orders Graph · Customer Orders Summary · G/L Control · Open Customer Orders · Open Purchase Orders
Financial Cash Flow Entry · Cash Flow Forecast · Financial Control Report · Actual vs Budget Comparison
Customer Service Customer List · Customer Orders Dynamic View · Fill Rate Graph · Items Causing Shortages · On Time Shipping · Shipping Graph · Top Credit Memos · Top Invoiced
Sales & Marketing Sales Analysis · Budget – Forecast Entry
Inventory Inventory Usage Aging · Inventory Bin/Serial/Lot Status · Inventory Class Generator · Inventory Exceptions Summary · Inventory Status · Inventory Transactions · Inventory Turns Details Chart · Inventory Turns Graph · Item Details View · Physical Inventory Count · Physical Inventory Prior Variances · Stock Status
Purchasing Purchase Order Receipts · Purchase Orders Scheduled to be Received · Purchasing Exception Items · Purchasing Exception Orders · Reorder Level · Top Vendors · Vendor List · Vendor Performance
Production Components Causing Shortages · Multi-Level Shop Floor · Production Orders · Production Orders Aging · Production Orders Exceptions · Production Orders History · Reported Production · Shop Floor Orders Schedule · Shop Floor Order View
Material Requirements MRP Orders
Designer Crystal Reports · Crystal Reports (Logicity) · Query Analyzer · Save and Share Links · Advanced Report Designer

The roster of standard reports describes what each of these reports shows.

Where to go next

Tip

Need a hand? The PULSE support team is happy to help — call (513) 723-8095 or email [email protected].