User Management Dashlet

Nagios XI administrators have the capability to create and manage user accounts, each with specific permissions to monitor hosts and services within the Nagios XI instance. For administrators who require quick access to this user information, the User Management Dashlet provides an efficient solution. This Dashlet enables administrators to view, add, and remove users directly from their dashboards, streamlining the management process and offering a centralized interface for user oversight.

How the User Management Dashlet works

The User Management Dashlet utilizes the Nagios XI API, specifically interacting with the system tree, to retrieve and manage user information. The API endpoint designed for user data includes several details about each user, such as their user ID, username, full name, email address, and account status (enabled/disabled). However, for the dashlet’s intended functionality, only the username and user ID are required, as these are the primary identifiers necessary for adding or removing users.

Upon initialization, the Dashlet queries the API to fetch a list of all users within the Nagios XI instance. This list is then displayed on the administrator’s dashboard, where the user IDs and usernames are shown in an easily navigable format. With this data in hand, the administrator can efficiently perform actions such as adding new users or removing existing ones directly from the dashboard interface, without needing to navigate through multiple pages or API endpoints.

The user management process is seamless, allowing for immediate updates to the user list in real-time, with all changes being reflected instantly across the Nagios XI environment. The integration with the API ensures that the Dashlet always displays up-to-date information, providing administrators with a reliable and efficient tool to maintain user access.

The other features of this Dashlet allow an administrator to add or delete users in the Nagios XI instance. The buttons won’t do anything immediately, aside from revealing a modal where you can input or select information.

Let’s start with the “Add Users” modal. This modal requests the necessary details for creating a user, including their username, full name, email, and a simple password. The password is considered simple because the new user will be prompted to change it upon logging in. Once all information is entered, pressing the button will send the request to the API, officially adding the user to Nagios XI. The newly created user will have basic privileges. This means their API access will be very limited compared to the administrator account, which is only able to view objects. If you want to make a user an administrator, you will have to change permissions in Admin>Manage Users.

The final feature of this dashlet allows you to delete users. It does this fairly simply, it uses a dropdown that collects users in the same way as our earlier list. This means that the list will update when either of the dashlet functions is run. Simply choose a user from the dropdown and click delete, it will ask you to confirm just to make sure you didn’t select the wrong user, but after you confirm, the user will be deleted.

To try the User Management Dashlet, download it here. If you’d like to read more about the Nagios XI API, please read this article: https://library.nagios.com/training/using-the-nagios-xi-api/.