Setting User Type Preferences

Every user account has a set of preferences that govern how the site's pages appear to the user, defaults for the information that is displayed to the user after logging in, and other settings such as how long the user can remain idle before being logged out. All of these settings are configured on the User Preferences page. You can choose whether users can view or modify their preferences when you set User Type permissions, and these permissions can be granted to most users.

There are cases, however, where you will want to set preferences that cannot be changed by the user - when it is necessary to restrict users to one list that is always filtered, for example. The image to the right shows the preferences created for a reviewer User Type. Notice that Default List, Default Query Form, and Default Filter are all configured such that the first page a reviewer sees is the Technology Approval List which is screened by the Technology Approval filter. This configuration ensures that reviewers can only access documents that are ready for review since documents that are not in the proper state with the proper approvals are filtered out. Although reviewers are allowed to view their preferences, they do not have permission to change them.

When you set preferences for a User Type, those settings become the default preferences for all users of that type. Setting preferences for the "any" User Type sets the default preferences for all User Types.

When you set preferences for a User Type, the changes that you make will flow through to the preferences of all user accounts assigned to that User Type unless the user has overridden the defaults by setting their own preferences. Changing the Navigation Color preference for the superuser type, for example, will change that preference for all superuser accounts except for those users that have changed the Navigation Color. Preferences that the user has not changed will continue to reflect the defaults set for the User Type. Likewise, when you change the preferences for the "any" User Type those changes will flow through to all User Types that are still using the default settings.

Preference	Description
View Web Headers	Controls the visibility of the header and footer for all pages in the web site. You may prefer to set this preference to No for your account and for those of your office staff in order to allocate more space for displaying lists and other information.
Default List	Designates the first list that is displayed to the user after logging in. This setting is only applicable for users who can work with lists of documents or records, including applicants who can create multiple applications of the same type.
Default Query Form	Designates the form that is displayed to a user that is viewing an existing document. For an applicant, this would be the parent form of an application. You can also select one of the forms contained in a document in order to direct the user's attention to a form that they are required to complete (see the reviewer example above). This setting only controls the user's starting point - users can always navigate to any of the forms they have permission to view.
Default Add Form	Designates the form that is used when a user creates a new document. This setting is only applicable if the user can only create one type of document. When a user can choose which document to create, they are presented with a Documents Page that displays a link for each document type.
Default Filter	Designates the filter that is applied to the user's Default List and any other list that they view. Users that have permission to query filters can clear the filter at any time. Users who do not have that permission will have limited access to documents and their list views will only display documents that meet the filter criteria.
Rows Per Page	Controls the number of rows that are displayed in lists of documents, fields, forms, field options, etc. When the number of items in a list exceeds this value, the list is divided into pages that you can navigate between using the control icons.
Session Timeout	Designates the number of seconds that a user can be idle before they are automatically logged out. A user is deemed idle when they have stayed on one page without saving. The idle timer is reset when the user navigates to a different page. To mitigate the chance that a user may lose information that they have entered, a series of pop-up dialogs warns the user that their time is expiring beginning when 75% of the time has expired if there is an indication that any changes have been made on the user's current page. This setting helps to reduce congestion on the server by releasing the resources reserved for the user's session.
Default User Type	In sites where users can create new Users outside of the Users Page, this setting designates the type of user that will be created.