Manage users
From LimeSurvey Manual
General
If you click on the key 
icon, you get to the basic user management window. Depending on the rights given your login, you can either simply change your password or possibly manipulate other user accounts and set their privileges. User in this context refers to some administrative user with login to the survey system administrative interface.
If you want to grant a user limited access to a survey add the user first and after having chosen the survey at the admin panel select "Survey security settings", add the user and set survey access rights for this user.
Adding a user
At the bottom of this screen is a line with text boxes that let you define new user parameters:
- Username: The login name of the user
- Email: The email address used to send this user their password and other administrative messages
- Full Name: The full name of the user as it will appear otherwise
When you click the Add User button, a password is automatically generated for the new user.
Unless you are using the 'Web server Authentication Delegation' feature, an email is then sent to the new registered user giving them all the information required to login (administrative server URL, login name, and password). If the user does not have a valid email, you must then go back in and change that users password to something you know and separately inform them of it.
Setting user permissions
The following access rights can be set for each user independent of any survey:
- Superadmin rights
- Create Surveys
- Configurator
- Create Users
- Delete Users
- Manage templates
- Manage label-sets/labels
Each of these rights are described next in more detail. For the most part, most users except knowledgeable administrators should not have any of these rights except maybe Create Surveys.
Superadmin right
A user with SuperAdmin has the right to manage all objects (surveys, question, templates, labels) and users on the LimeSurvey platform. However, only the initial administrator, the one who has been defined at installation time, can grant this SuperAdmin right to other users.
Configurator right
This right determines if a user can access the following actions:
- Check data integrity
- Backup entire database
- Access phpinfo in overview summary screen
Create / Delete Users right
A user may be granted the right to create other users. In this case they will only be able to grant the rights they already have, but not more. In case an already created user needs more rights than his 'father' has, then the initial SuperAdmin will have to adopt this user by clicking the 'Take Ownership' button on the line describing this user. This administrator will then be able to grant this user all required rights. Separately, one can be given permission to delete users they have created as well.
Template rights
The Set Template Rights button let you choose which template a given user may use in his own surveys.
The 'default' template is always accessible to all users. Please note that this is the right to use the templates and not to manage/change them.
Labelset rights
Unlike Templates, this right enables one to edit the labelsets that are global to all surveys. The importance of restricting this right is to prevent a finished survey from being disrupted by changing a label set it currently references.
Rights to manipulate each survey can be set from within the survey once created or selected. See the survey key button
To be moved somewhere else once better defined:
There are several classes of possible people who access a LimeSurvey installation. But only one set of people is actually termed a user in the code and documentation. So lets understand what these classes of people are so we can better understand the terminology of the program.
| Class | Description |
| Installation Administrator | Those people who create login user accounts to allow others to create, edit, activate and/or view surveys and their results. Often can be given access to edit the templates, labelsets and other key features independent of any particular survey stored. |
| Survey Administrator | A person with a login account that is given some management access to a particular survey. Each survey can have its own set of users with specific rights to manipulate the survey. These rights can be as broad as to activate a survey and possibly edit its question base. They can be as minimum as simply able to review the results to date. |
| Participant | Those people who simply respond or participate in taking a survey. They may or may not have token access. They do not need a login account to the administrative interface and thus are not termed users. |
| Installer | A special class of person who has access to the MySQL (or similar) database server and possibly the command line interface of the computers operating system in order to install and configure the survey software. This person is asked to setup the initial SuperAdmin user account from which other user login accounts can be created. |
| Developer | An very special class of person who has access to the source code and can manipulate it to change the programs behavior. Generally only done with versions of the survey that are not available for live, active surveys. |
Use one time passwords
Since version 1.81 a user can call the limesurvey login at /limesurvey/admin and pass username and a one time password which was previously written into the users table (column one_time_pw) by an external application.
To enable this login method a setting has to be turned on ($use_one_time_passwords = true;) in config.php.
The URL has to contain the following variables:
- user: The username normally used to login into Limesurvey. This username has to exist in the 'users' table of the database.
- onepass: The plain text password which is then compared to the password in the 'users' table
A valid URL to login using a one time password will look like this:
Things to watch out for:
- One time passwords have to be enabled by setting $use_one_time_passwords = true; in config.php
- The passed username has to exist in Limesurvey's users table
- The one time password, which can be set by an external application, has to be stored as MD5 hash in column one_time_pw of table users
- The passed plain text password will be hashed using md5() function and will then be compared to the stored hash in column one_time_pw of table users. Both passwords have to match.
- After the first login with the one time password this password is deleted from the database. The user won't be able to login with this password anymore. If you are confronted with session timeout problems raise the setting for $sessionlifetime (default is 3600 seconds).