The Groups and Users menu's, allow you to configure Role Based Access and Account level permissions. Groups are created to define custom restrictive roles, that can be associated to users that must have access to only certain parts of the Glass interface. Users are created to provide login credentials for other users of the Exivity system. A user can be associated to a single Group, and can have access to all accounts or to a subset of accounts.

Creating Groups

To create a custom group with limited access to the Exivity Glass user interface, follow this procedure:

1. Go to 'Administration' > 'Groups', then click 'Add Group'

2. Provide a meaningful Name for this Group

3. Select one or multiple permissions from the custom list of 'Role Names' below

4. When you're done with your selection, click the 'Save' button to create your group. Now you can create Users and associate them to this group.

   5.

Creating Users

To create a User that will only have access to a certain account or a selection of several accounts, use the following procedure to create a user with special account level permissions:

1. Go to 'Administration' > 'Users', then click 'Add User'

2. Provide a login name in the 'Username' field, a valid 'E-mail' address, and a 'Password' of at least 8 characters

3. From the 'Group' dropdown box, select the 'Group' you want to associate to this users

4. Next, click the 'Account Access' tab, and select the 'Access Type' for this user:

   • Grant access to all accounts - to provide access to any of the available accounts in the system

   • Grant access to only specific accounts - to only provide access to usage and charge data of specific accounts

5. If you've selected Grant access to only specific accounts, then select from the Account Access list, each Account Name where this user should have access for. You may select a top level account, or an account further down in the hierarchy. Account inheritance is applicable, meaning lower level accounts are automatically included when selecting a top level account. If there are multiple Report Definitions, select the corresponding Definition from the drop down list first, before selecting any accounts.

6. When all fields have been filled in, you may create the user by clicking the 'Save' button.

The Workflows menu allows you to schedule various tasks and execute them at a specific date and time. This allows the execution of different Extractors and Transformers, so that they are tightly chained together.

Creating a Workflow

To create a new Workflow, go to 'Administration' > 'Workflows', then click the green button '+ Workflow':

1. Provide a meaningful name for the Workflow

2. Optionally you can provide a detailed Description

3. The Start date of the Workflow, when it will run the first time

4. The interval: Hourly, Daily or Monthly

5. At what time should the Workflow start

6. Provide an interval value. I.e. provide 2 for every second Hourly / Daily / Monthly, depending on your configured interval

7. Add a new step in your work flow

8. Set the Type of the step using the drop down menu

9. Provide the option that goes with the selected Type. This can be your Extractor, Transformer, Report or other name

10. Depending on the selected Step Type, you can provide an offset date. This value is used during execution of that step. Typically this would be used for a From date offset (i.e. -1 for yesterday)

11. A To date offset can be provided for some step types (i.e. 0 for today)

12. Additional arguments can be send to the step. This is typically used for some Extractors and when executing a custom Command

13. You can delete a step using the red minus button

14. To view historical Workflow results, click the Status tab

Special Workflow Steps

Apart from adding Extractor, Transformer and Report steps, there are two different Workflow Step types:

• Core

• Execute Command

Core

The Core command allows you to run a few predefined API calls, currently these are the following:

• Run garbage collector

  • Cleans up the server getPrices cache table and Redis cache

• Purge cache

  • This will Unprepare any prepared reports. Use with caution

• Refresh budgets

  • Evalualte all configured budgets

• Send heartbeat

  • Send an API heartbeat request. For future use.

Execute command

The Execute Command step enables you to execute an external command, like a script:

As an example: you could run a Powershell script to obtains some data from a special data source that Exivity Extractors are not able or allowed to connect to. This script could be executed the following manner:

powershell.exe "D:\script\special.ps1"((-).addDays(-1)).ToString("""yyyyMMdd""")

The above command calls the Powershell executable to run the special.ps1 script, with a dynamically generated parameter that is evaluated at run time. This particular example always provides yesterdays date in yyyyMMdd format as a parameter to the special.ps1 script. Many other variations and scripting languages are possible. Feel free to experiment.

Exivity allows you to configure a number of system variables easily, such as:

• custom logo, branding and color schema

• currency and decimal values

• date format

• fiscal year

• custom css

To change these and other settings, follow the instructions provided in this document.

Branding

To apply custom branding to the Glass interface, use the 'Administration' > 'Configuration' menu, and then select the 'Branding' tab:

The following GUI adjustments can be done:

1. Provide your custom product name

2. Change the logo as show at the left top part of the screen. The rectangular logo that says "Exivity" by default

3. Change the square logo at the top left part of the screen. Next to the brand logo that says "Exivity" by default

4. Change the favicon as shown in your browser favorites bar

5. Change the GUI default color using the drop down list.

6. If you want to change other colors, font types and other CSS specific parts of the GUI that are not listed in this menu, you can use the 'Show Advanced' button, to add custom CSS code

7. Click the 'Save' button to apply your changes/

Formatting

To change country specific formatting or decimal rounding, use the 'Administration' > 'Configuration' menu, and select the 'Branding' tab:

The following changes to the formatting can be done:

1. Change the system wide Currency settings

2. Configure comma or dot value for the decimal separator

3. If you want to configure a thousands separator, you can choose between comma, dot and space

4. Rate precision refers to the amount of decimal values shown on reports for the (average) rate value

5. The Report precision can be changed to limit the number of decimal values shown on non-invoice reports

6. The Invoice precision can be changed to limit the number of decimal values shown on invoice cost reports

7. The quantity decimal values can be limited using Quantity precision

8. To apply a system wide date format, choose your preferred date format from the Date format drop down list

Reporting settings

To change reporting settings, such as the address lines and logo on your invoice report, use the 'Administration' > 'Configuration' menu, and select the 'Reporting' tab:

The following changes to the reporting configuration can be done:

1. Use the Address lines text field to provide a custom address which will be shown on the textual invoice cost reports

2. To change the Logo that will be shown on the right hand side of your invoice cost report, use Select File to browse and select your custom logo

3. A custom footer text can be added to your invoice report using the text field next to Extra text

4. To adjust the maximum amount of series shown in the Exivity graphical report line graphs, change the value for Maximum graph series

5. If you have a non-standard fiscal year start, you may change the Reporting start month using the provided drop down list

6. Use the Save button to apply your changes

Mail Server Settings

Exivity is able to send out e-mail messages for certain tasks. This can be used for resetting user account passwords and sending out events such as failing workflows. To enable this functionality it is required to configure an SMTP server. This can be done using the following procedure:

• Navigate to: Administration > System > Environment

• Ensure to fill in your SMTP server details as shown in above image

• Click the Update button to save your changes

• If you now logout and try to login again, you will notice a "Reset Password" link. This can be used by all of your users, as long as a valid e-mail address has been associated to each user account

Advanced

config.json

In order to access advanced configuration for all users which can't currently be modified through the interface, edit the file config.json in the web/glass subdirectory of the Program directory.

The default contents of this file should look like this:

{
  "whiteLabel": false,
  "apiHost": null
}

Configure a default API domain

When logging in, users have the option to change the API domain by clicking the Change domain link:

In order to specify a default for all users, edit the config.json file and add your default domain as the apiHost option:

{
  "whiteLabel": false,
-  "apiHost": null
+  "apiHost": "https://example.com:443"
}

Full white-label

To never show any Exivity related branding in the interface, set the whiteLabel option to true:

{
-  "whiteLabel": false,
+  "whiteLabel": true,
  "apiHost": null
}

When the whiteLabel option is enabled, certain functionality will be disabled in the GUI:

• Manual clearing of caches on the About page.

• Documentation links in the header will be turned off.