User Management

Table of Contents

Introduction
Creating a New User
Reset a User’s Password
Renaming a User
Granting Administrator Privileges to a User
Managing Groups
Setting Storage Quotas
Deleting Users
Enabling Custom Groups

Introduction

On the User management page of your ownCloud Web UI you can:

Create new users
View all of your users in a single scrolling window
Filter users by group
See what groups they belong to
Edit their full names and passwords
See their data storage locations
View and set quotas
Create and edit their email addresses
Send an automatic email notification to new users
Delete them with a single click

The default view displays basic information about your users.

The Group filters on the left sidebar lets you quickly filter users by their group memberships, and create new groups.

Click the gear icon on the lower left sidebar to set a default storage quota, and to display additional fields: Show storage location, Show last log in, Show user backend, Send email to new users, and Show email address.

User accounts have the following properties:

Login Name (Username): The unique ID of an ownCloud user, and it cannot be changed.
Full Name: The user’s display name that appears on file shares, the ownCloud Web interface, and emails. Admins and users may change the Full Name anytime. If the Full Name is not set it defaults to the login name.
Password: The admin sets the new user’s first password. Both the user and the admin can change the user’s password at anytime.
Groups: You may create groups, and assign group memberships to users. By default new users are not assigned to any groups.
Group Admin: Group admins are granted administrative privileges on specific groups, and can add and remove users from their groups.
Quota: The maximum disk space assigned to each user. Any user that exceeds the quota cannot upload or sync data. You have the option to include external storage in user quotas.

Creating a New User

To create a user account:

Enter the new user’s Login Name and their initial Password (cannot be "0")
Optionally, assign Groups memberships
Click the Create button

Login names may contain letters (a-z, A-Z), numbers (0-9), dashes (-), underscores (_), periods (.) and at signs (@). After creating the user, you may fill in their Full Name if it is different than the login name, or leave it for the user to complete.

If you have checked Send email to new user in the control panel on the lower left sidebar, you may also enter the new user’s email address, and ownCloud will automatically send them a notification with their new login information. You may edit this email using the email template editor on your Admin page (see Email Configuration).

Reset a User’s Password

You cannot recover a user’s password, but you can set a new one:

Hover your cursor over the user’s Password field
Click on the pencil icon
Enter the user’s new password in the password field, and remember to provide the user with their password

If you have encryption enabled, there are special considerations for user password resets.

See Encryption Configuration.

Renaming a User

Each ownCloud user has two names: a unique Login Name used for authentication, and a Full Name, which is their display name. You can edit the display name of a user, but you cannot change the login name of any user.

To set or change a user’s display name:

Hover your cursor over the user’s Full Name field
Click on the pencil icon
Enter the user’s new display name

Granting Administrator Privileges to a User

ownCloud has two types of administrators: Super Administrators and Group Administrators. Group administrators have the rights to create, edit and delete users in their assigned groups. Group administrators cannot access system settings, or add or modify users in the groups that they are not Group Administrators for. Use the dropdown menus in the Group Admin column to assign group admin privileges.

Super Administrators have full rights on your ownCloud server, and can access and modify all settings. To assign the Super Administrators role to a user, simply add them to the admin group.

Managing Groups

You can assign new users to groups when you create them, and create new groups when you create new users. You may also use the Add Group button at the top of the left pane to create new groups. New group members will immediately have access to file shares that belong to their new groups.

Setting Storage Quotas

There are 4 types of quota settings in ownCloud when dealing with LDAP users.

Quota Field

Found in User Authentication the Advanced Tab Special Attributes, this setting overwrites the rest. If set, this is what will be set for an LDAP user’s quota in ownCloud.

Quota Default

Found in User Authentication the Advanced Tab Special Attributes, this is the fallback option if no quota field is defined.

User Quota

This is what you set in the web UI drop down menu, and is how you set user quota.

Default Quota

This will be set if no quota is set, and is found in Users Tab Gear Wheel Default Quota. If Quota Field is not set, but Quota Default is, and a systems administrator tries to set a quota for an LDAP user with User Quota, it will not work, since it is overridden by Quota Default.

Click the gear icon on the lower left pane to set a default storage quota. This is automatically applied to new users. You may assign a different quota to any user by selecting from the Quota dropdown, selecting either a preset value or entering a custom value. When you create custom quotas, use the normal abbreviations for your storage values such as 500 MB, 5 GB, 5 TB, and so on.

You now have a configurable option in config.php that controls whether external storage is counted against user’s quotas. This is still experimental, and may not work as expected. The default is to not count external storage as part of user storage quotas. If you prefer to include it, then change the default false to true.:

'quota_include_external_storage' => false,

Metadata (such as thumbnails, temporary files, and encryption keys) takes up about 10% of disk space, but is not counted against user quotas. Users can check their used and available space on their Personal pages. Only files that originate with users count against their quotas, and not files shared with them that originate from other users. For example, if you upload files to a different user’s share, those files count against your quota. If you re-share a file that another user shared with you, that file does not count against your quota, but the originating user’s.

Encrypted files are a little larger than unencrypted files; the unencrypted size is calculated against the user’s quota.

Deleted files that are still in the trash bin do not count against quotas. The trash bin is set at 50% of quota. Deleted file aging is set at 30 days. When deleted files exceed 50% of quota then the oldest files are removed until the total is below 50%.

When version control is enabled, the older file versions are not counted against quotas.

When a user creates a public share via URL, and allows uploads, any uploaded files count against that user’s quota.

Deleting Users

Since version 10.0, this functionality has been extracted to a separate application (user_management).

The ownCloud delete user confirmation dialog.

To delete a user, hover your cursor over their name on the Users page, and click the trashcan icon that appears at the far right. You’ll then see a confirmation dialog appear, asking if you’re sure that you want to delete the user.

If you click Yes, the user is permanently deleted, including all of the files owned by the user, including all files they have shared. If you need to preserve the user’s files and shares, you must first download them from your ownCloud Files page, (which compresses them into a zip file).

Alternatively, you can use a sync client to copy them to your local computer. If you click No, the confirmation dialog will disappear and the user is not deleted.

See File Sharing Configuration to learn how to create persistent file shares that survive user deletions.

Enabling Custom Groups

In previous versions of ownCloud, files and folders could only be shared with individual users or groups created by administrators. This wasn’t the most efficient way to work. From ownCloud 10.0, users can create groups on-the-fly, through a feature called "Custom Groups", enabling them to share content in a more flexible way.

To enable Custom Groups:

From the ownCloud Market, which you can find in version 10.0 under the Apps menu, click Market.
Click Collaboration (1), to filter the list of available options and click the Custom groups application (2).
Click INSTALL in the bottom right-hand corner of the Custom Groups application.

With this done, Custom Group functionality will be available in your ownCloud installation.