What Does the System Administrator Do in ABM Service?
The system administrator is ABM user number 1, and is the only person who sees the Administration part of the ABM Service menu. From there they reach three screens that change things for the whole company: Database, Sign-in and Customer sign-ins. Open the menu with Menu (or Navigation menu on the Calls, Customers and Scheduler screens) and look under Administration, below the four main screens.
Who is the system administrator in ABM Service?
The system administrator in ABM Service is always ABM user number 1: the user with number 1 in ABM's own list of users, the same list everybody picks their name from when they sign in. This is fixed on every site. There is no setting that makes another user an administrator, and no permission to tick; when user 1 signs in, the Administration part of the menu appears, and for everybody else it does not.
The system administrator is also an ordinary user. User 1 has the same Home, Customers, Calls and Scheduler screens as everybody else, and meets the same sign-in rules, including an authenticator app when the company requires one. Apart from the Administration menu, ABM Service has no permissions for office staff: every ABM user who can sign in to your company can do the same things on those four screens, and user 1 has no extra power on them, such as deleting a call or a customer.
What the role is for: a few decisions in ABM Service affect every user at once, such as whether everybody must use an authenticator app when signing in over the web, or when to apply changes that make the database faster. Keeping those decisions with one known person means nobody changes them by accident.
Note: If you need to hand the job to somebody else, it goes with the sign-in for ABM user number 1. ABM Service has no way to give the Administration menu to a different user.
Where is the Administration menu?
The Administration menu is in the ABM Service menu, under the four main screens (Home, Customers, Calls, Scheduler) and above Appearance. It is only there when you are signed in as user 1.
- Open the menu with Menu on the Home screen, or Navigation menu at the top of the filters panel on the Calls, Customers or Scheduler screen.
- Look under the heading Administration in the menu.
- Choose Database, Sign-in or Customer sign-ins.
While the database has recommended changes waiting, Database in the menu shows the number of changes beside it, so you can see at a glance that something needs doing. The system administrator's screens have the same Menu button at the top left, so you can go straight back to Home, Calls or any other screen from them.
What can only the system administrator do?
Only the system administrator can use the three screens under Administration in the ABM Service menu:
- Database — shows the changes this version of ABM Service recommends for your company's database, lets you apply them at a quiet moment, and keeps a history of what was applied. These changes make screens such as the Calls list, customer search and the Scheduler faster.
- Sign-in — decides whether people signing in over the web need an authenticator app (Off, Optional or Required), and lets you reset the authenticator of somebody who has lost their phone.
- Customer sign-ins — decides which of your customers may sign in to the Customer portal, and what they may see and do there.
The system administrator is also the only person who sees the reminder about recommended database changes: a banner across the top of every screen except the Database screen itself, and a message in the middle of the screen when a new version first finds changes waiting (in a browser once per version; in the ABM Service desktop app each time it is started while changes are waiting).
The Administration screens do not manage the people who work in the office. Adding a person, changing their name or password, giving them your company and removing them when they leave are done in ABM itself, by whoever looks after ABM at your company; the People list on the Sign-in screen only reads that list. There is also no screen here for your company's call statuses, call types or engineers, which come from ABM too, and none for backing up the database or changing the server's settings, which are for whoever looks after SQL Server and your ABM Service server.
What happens if somebody else opens an administration page?
If anybody other than user 1 opens one of the administration pages, for example from a bookmark or a link somebody shared, ABM Service shows the screen's name, the heading This page is for the system administrator and one sentence under it, and nothing from the screen itself. Nothing is read from the database and nothing can be changed.
The sentence under that heading names the screen. On the Database page it says that recommended database changes are applied by user 1, the system administrator on every site, and that the Database entry is only in their menu. The Sign-in and Customer sign-ins pages say the same for their own setting.
Other users never see the Administration heading in their menu, the database banner or the database message, so they have nothing to click by mistake. If a colleague reports seeing that page, it only means they followed a link meant for you.
Can I use the administration screens in the ABM Service desktop app?
Yes. When you sign in to the ABM Service desktop app as user 1, the menu shows Administration with Database, Sign-in and Customer sign-ins, exactly as in the browser, and the database banner and message appear in the desktop app's windows too.
The settings belong to your company, not to the browser or the computer, so a change made in the desktop app applies in the browser and the other way round. One thing to remember on the Sign-in screen: the authenticator app setting you choose there is obeyed only when people sign in over the web. The desktop app's own sign-in is unchanged by it, even though you can set it from inside the desktop app.
Each ABM company has its own settings on all three administration screens, so a site with two companies sets each one up separately: open ABM Service for the other company, sign in there as user 1, and make the change again. The line under each screen's heading names the company you are in, so check it before you change anything.