OpenX Blog

The new version of OpenX introduces some major enhancements to user management, including more fine grained control of individual user permissions and logging of trafficking changes.

These new features will be of particular interest if you more than one person logs into your ad server. For example:

• Website owners, who may let advertisers log to see live statistics, and
• Networks and agencies, who may have many people involved in trafficking.

In previous versions of OpenX, the management of users and accounts system was simple and effective so long as it fitted well with your needs, but this was restrictive. An Advertiser or Publisher (website owner) could be given access to login to the ad server to and view reports and statistics. All trafficking was done by the administrator or special “Agency” level accounts.

This presented some challenges. It was often necessary to have multiple people sharing the same username and password in order to access the system since login credentials were associated with a specific account including the Administrator account, as well as each Agency, Advertiser or Publisher account.

We have implemented a more sophisticated user permissions system in order to provide a hosted version of OpenX, and we’re excited to be able to share the results of this work as part of the new version of our open source ad server (currently in beta).

Introducing the new OpenX user management system…
The new features are the introduction of user and accounts, with a permissions system to give users specific permissions to control advertisers or websites as well as a complete audit trail of all trafficking changes.

1. Give each individual user their own login details
This is the first and most obvious change to the system, by giving each user their own login details we’ve made the permissions system act much more like a traditional user management system. This also means that all trafficking actions can be logged against the user who made the change rather than a shared account.

2. Control what each user account can see and do
The new user accounts are more flexible because permissions are no longer directly associated with a single advertiser or publisher. This means you can give a trafficker access to control many websites and advertisers (called a Manager Account) while giving other users more restricted permissions.

3. Set specific permissions on a user account basis
The new system gives better control over permissions to create, modify and update actions by setting these properties for each user account individually.

4. View the history of configuration changes
The new auditing system lets you see a history of all configuration changes which will be a great help in troubleshooting delivery problems back to the cause.

5. Switch between ‘accounts’
Users can switch between the different accounts they are associated with. This affects what they see on the administrative interface, for example switching to the Administrator Account to make global configuration changes and then back to a Manager Account to perform trafficking tasks.

We think these new features will be of great interest to anyone who delegates trafficking campaigns, giving them more control over their ad server. You can find out more about the new user management tools in the user and administrator guides.

• The new User Guide includes information about users and accounts
• The new Administrator Guide includes details about managing users.

Update: We’ve updated the terminology in this article for clarity around key terms (users, accounts, administrator, manager, advertiser, trafficker.