Friday, November 20, 2009

Setting User Passwords - still counter intuitive in Plone 4

This discussion revolves around the question - How can I as an administrator set user passwords?
Let me start by saying, I am an active user of Plone and as far as usability (for administrators and content editors) goes, there are few CMS systems that I've worked with that can hold a candle to Plone. This observation is related to a small issue that I would love to see "fixed".


Before the Rant
Plone 4 is soooo much faster than Plone 3 and I'm loving some of the new usability/convenience features, like the "Image Handling" control panel for managing thumbnail sizes and the newly added ability to specify the group of a newly added user (noted in a screenshot below).
http://img.skitch.com/20091120-1ip2hpdmjh65cnjn65xryp7i4f.jpg
Scenario - Managing Users
When adding a new user, it is not unusual to want to set a user password.
http://img.skitch.com/20091120-83h3gpbb5jqy1dug3y2qnxiss6.jpg

By default, clicking "Site Setup" > "User and Groups" > "Add New User" will present a screen where you can't set a password.
http://img.skitch.com/20091120-jpx88f17ye6wgidb7pyuwerst3.jpg


The solution is to go to "Site Setup" > "Security" and check the "Let users select their own passwords" box.
http://img.skitch.com/20091120-rnrbyrbd1dkhhp5df8af53h57b.jpg

Now when I go back to "User and Groups" > "Add New User", I can now set a password.
http://img.skitch.com/20091120-q5cqwx3xe85wmk93q6jjwd9bwc.jpg
That's just weird!

Possible solution

I think there should be a new option under "Users and Groups". Something like a check box that says "Admin can set passwords".
http://img.skitch.com/20091120-cejtc3u6qu8drp5anuduky8e3f.jpg

In the overall scheme of things this is a tiny issue, but it's worth mentioning and worth fixing.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

This has now been fixed:

http://dev.plone.org/plone/changeset/32018

Don't say we don't love you! ;)

Unknown said...

As Alex says, this has been fixed. It was something that'd been on my mind last week as well since it ties in with the renaming of join_form that I've been putting off for weeks now.

So there are now two forms:
1) @@register, the user-facing form available throughout the site, works as before.
2) @@new-user, the manager-facing form linked from the users/groups control panel. This form now holds the "Add to the following groups" field and will always display the password field, regardless of the value of the "allow users to choose their own password" field.

This allows us to add more functionality to the manager's form as well as some clean up of the language which struggled to be meaningful when the form used in two different manners.

Unknown said...

Wow!... 4 days later and my issue has been solved... gotta love the plone community :). Much more responsive than apple, who still can't hear me.

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