Specifications
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Attributes
As with any large user management system, functionality that allows for simpler administration is
always welcome. User attributes are a simple concept that allow for drastically reduced administration
overhead. This chapter aims to details what user attributes are and how to make the best use of them.
What are Attributes?
User attributes are simply attributes that perform a similar function to ‘environment variables’, and can
be created by a user and used throughout the system. The appliance comes with a set of default
attributes that cannot be removed these are used by the Personal Details Authentication module.
Security Questions
One of the default user attributes is placeOfBirth; all users have this attribute stored under the Security
Questions tab (User Console My Account Personal Details). Each user can populate this
attribute with their respective answer and when the Personal Details authentication module is used at
log-on and asks a user for their place of birth, the module merely looks to the value stored under this
attribute for each user logging into the system. If the attribute keyed in value matches that of the stored
placeOfBirth value authentication is successful.
For each user logging in the respective attribute is compared allowing for a single attribute to be used
by all users.