User management is the effective management of software licenses and permissions. Employees are given a set of privileges and permissions, and their access is removed when they no longer need to use that software. The introduction of cloud-based SAAS business models has increased the importance of user management, which affects enterprises in two important ways: costs and security.
Automating and streamlining the process of onboarding and offboarding users saves the company time and money. Further, companies need visibility into the usage of licenses so they can remove access from employees who have left the company or who no longer need access. Because software exists virtually, keeping track of unused licenses can be more challenging than monitoring the use of physical assets.
Businesses that fail to create a complete picture of their licenses and usage may find themselves paying for licenses they do not need. Worse, they may be leaving themselves open to security breaches by granting inappropriate levels of access to current or former employees.
New User Management Features of SwaggerHub
SmartBear understands the importance of user management, especially to large enterprises. We are constantly tweaking, improving, and adding to our user management features.
User Management API
The new SwaggerHub User Management API helps customers automate their User Management process.
The new features, available to enterprise users and trial customers, allow you to bypass the UI and perform most user management features via the API. This includes inviting new users, changing the permissions of current users, monitoring SwaggerHub usage, and deleting users who no longer need access. New employees will be able to use SwaggerHub quickly, and the company can safeguard sensitive data by automating the removal of ex-employees and those who no longer have permission to use SwaggerHub.
To take advantage of the new User Management API to invite users to an Organization, use the new POST/orgs/ORG_NAME/members operation to invite one or more email addresses. New users are set to Consumer by default. You have the option to set the user role to Owner, Designer, or Consumer. The request must be authenticated using the API key of the Admin user or Organization owner.
To get started with the User Management API or to learn more about the User Management API, click here.
Watch SmartBear solutions engineer Alex Bonstrom demonstrate the User Management API:
Team Administration
The new team administration role allows organizations to delegate API design team management to specific members.
The Team Admin can:
- Add or remove team members
- Promote others to team admin
- Delete the team
Within Teams, you can choose not to have an Admin, or designate one or more team members as an Admin. The Team Admin can only view and manage teams for which they've been assigned administrative rights. Owners of Organizations retain the rights to manage Teams.
To make it easier to see how your team is organized, the Organization Overview page has been redesigned. The Team Member table has a new column that displays each user’s Organization-level role: Owner, Designer, or Consumer.