Users and accounts

There are two major aspects of users and accounts that we'll discuss in this article. a) having multiple users access a single customer account and b) managing permissions for those users.

Multiple users

When you first sign up you'll end up with one user (that'd be you) accessing one customer account. Depending on whether you identified your account as a personal or organizational account, this customer account will carry either your name or your organization's name.

It may be desirable to give someone else access to manage your account's services. Sharing your login and password is never a good idea, so we've created a way to give these additional users access to your account using their own login.

On the Users tab of the main Accounts management page you'll find a list of all users current assigned to the account.

Initially this will show only you. You may add other users here by entering their email address.

If that email address matches an existing Zerigo user profile, they'll be given permission immediately.

If not, we'll automatically send them an invitation to register with Zerigo. While they may accept the invitation and create a Zerigo profile at any time, they'll only be assigned permission to your account if they respond within 10 days. After 10 days the invitation will show expired. You may delete it and create another one to extend the invitation another 10 days.

Permissions

Depending on what exactly this person needs access to will determine what permissions you choose to assign.

Permissions are broken into four levels.

Customer Admin

This permission automatically includes all other permissions. It also has the ability to manage users and their permissions. This can only be set for the initial user. (Contact support if you need to hand off this permission to another user.)

Billing

This permission has the right to view and manage billing information and invoices. Mostly useful for organizations, this might make sense for someone in an accounting department.

Provisioning

This permission gives the right to add and remove services. Another way to think of it is this permission has the right to incur new billing charges. Usually anyone with this permission will also need the Systems permission.

Systems

While this permission is last, it's probably the most useful as it includes the ability to use and manage already provisioned services.

Departmental billing and other billing alternative

With our existing support for multiple users and multiple customer/billing accounts, it may be desirable to set up different customer accounts that bill individually. One possible use case is to have separate departmental billing within a larger organization.

The process basically looks like creating a new account, but with using an existing login.

If this interests you, give us a call and we'll walk you through it or setup for you.