Product

Mifos in the Philippines

 

 
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System Users

This section details personnel or users, hierarchy levels of users, creation and management of users, user states, etc. Personnel are the end users of Mifos system and exist at all office levels. Each personnel or user is assigned to a single office at a time, but can be transferred to another office. Note: The terms “personnel” and “users” and "system users" have been used interchangeably.

General Features

  • Users need to be unique across the MFI. Uniqueness of the user is defined by the following personnel attributes:
    • Government ID (if applicable), or
    • Name and Date of Birth
  • Mifos system supports two-level hierarchy for the users:
    • Non-Loan Officers, for users belonging to offices at all levels
    • Loan Officers, at BO level only
  • In addition to the hierarchy levels, roles are created and assigned to the users. These roles are a group of permissions and define the activities the user is allowed to perform.
  • Users can access the Mifos system as long as their status is Active. If status is Inactive, all access to the system is revoked.

System User Creation

At each office, users are created and managed by other system users with required permissions:

  • Any user with the required permissions can create personnel for any office in his/her data scope.
  • When a user is created, a User system ID is generated.

After creation, some of the attributes of a user can be modified. For details, see the table below:

Attributes for User Creation

s no. attribute name/th> data type range default mandatory for active state editable after active state can be modified by user from the my setting section description/notes
1. First Name Alphanumeric N/A None Yes Yes Yes For details, see Name.
2. Middle Name Alphanumeric None None No Yes Yes  
3. Second Last Name Alphanumeric None None No Yes Yes  
4. Last Name Alphanumeric None None Yes Yes Yes  
5. Office Click and select As per data scope of logged in user. None Yes Yes No This is selected from a list of offices. The values in the list are dependent on the data scope as per office hierarchy.
6. User Title Drop-down Options defined by HO None No Yes No This is the personnel's actual title in the office, like CFO, Accountant, and Sr. Loan Officer.
7. User Hierarchy Drop-down Loan Officer; Non-Loan Officer None Yes Yes No User hierarchy and the office level define the data scope of the user. Refer Data Scope

Non-Loan Officers exist at all levels of office. However, LOs exist only at the BOs.

Note: Clients can be assigned to LOs only. And, the clients and LOs should belong to the same branch.
LOs might physically function out of an AO, or RO, or HO, but there has to be a "virtual" branch set up in the system, which the LOs are a part of.
8. Email Alphanumeric N/A None No Yes Yes  
9. Roles Drop-down - Multi- select All Defined Roles None No Yes No One or more roles can be selected from a list of membership roles. For more details, see Roles.
10. Government ID # Alphanumeric N/A None As per configuration No No Government ID can be configured as mandatory or optional.
11. DOB Date N/A None Yes No Yes Age calculated as per the DOB is mentioned in the Preview and User Details page.
12. Gender Drop- down Male; Female None Yes Yes Yes
13. Language Preferred Drop- down English; Spanish MFI language No Yes Yes One language can be designated as preferred. If left blank, system assumes MFI language as the user preferred language.
14. Address 1 Alphanumeric N/A None Yes Yes Yes
15. Address 2 Alphanumeric N/A None No Yes Yes  
16. Address 3 Alphanumeric N/A None No Yes Yes  
17. City Alphanumeric N/A None Yes Yes Yes  
18. State Alphanumeric N/A None Yes Yes Yes  
19. Country Alphanumeric N/A None Yes Yes Yes  
20. Postal Code Alphanumeric N/A None No Yes Yes  
21. Telephone Alphanumeric N/A None No Yes Yes  
22. Custom Fields (10) Alphanumeric/Numeric/Date N/A None Configurable Yes No For details, see Custom Fields
23. Username Alphanumeric N/A None Yes No No This is the ID with which this user accesses the system.
System verifies and ensures that no two users have the same username.
24. Password Alphanumeric 6 to 20 characters None Yes Yes Yes Used to authenticate the users when they attempt to access the system. The user can modify passwords. It is also possible for administrative users to reset passwords of users for over whom they have administrative authority.

A password generator is out of scope. Admin has to specify the new password while resetting password for a user.

The user is required to change the password after the first login. For details, refer Passwords.

The passwords can be edited from the User Details page. Users can change the passwords from their My Settings section.
25. Confirm Password Alphanumeric 6 to 20 characters None Yes Yes Yes The passwords entered in Password and Confirm Password fields should match.
26. Date of Joining MFI Date N/A Current date No No No  
27. Date of leaving last office Date N/A None No No No This is the system-generated date of leaving the last branch. This is recorded by the system when the user is transferred to another office.
28. Date of joining office Date N/A None N/A N/A No System generated. This is the date when user record was created.
29. Status Drop-down Active; Inactive None N/A N/A N/A There is no restriction on the number of times the status of users can be changed from Active to Inactive and vice versa.

When a Loan Officer is marked as Inactive, all the clients, groups, and centers should either be transferred to another Loan Officer or should be Closed/Cancelled.
30. Notes Alphanumeric N/A None No Yes No  

 

User States

  • Users can be in an Active or Inactive status.
  • The status of a user can be changed from Active to Inactive, and vice versa.
  • LOs can be made Inactive only if there are no customers assigned to them.
  • There is no restriction on the number of times the status of a user can be changed from Active to Inactive and vice versa.

System User Accounts

Access to the Mifos system is through user accounts. User accounts have a username and password assigned to them. This function ensures the security of operations in the Mifos system.

Personnel Account Creation

The administrator creates the accounts and passwords for users. After logging in for the first time, the user is required to change the password. Passwords should be a minimum of 6 to maximum 20 alphanumeric characters.

  • A user can change the password after login. The user is prompted for the following before confirming the password change:
    • Old Password
    • New Password
    • Confirm New Password

Security is ensured through the following functions:

  • Password Encryption
    All passwords are stored in the database in an encrypted format. If a user forgets the password, a request can be submitted to the administrator. Administrator can reset the password and communicate to the user through a communication method external to Mifos (for example, verbally). The user can change the password at the next login.
  • Number of unsuccessful login attempts:
    If the user enters incorrect password five times consecutively, then the account is locked. The user then needs to contact the administrator to unlock the account, and get a new password. If the user is locked, the status remains Active, but the user cannot access the system.
  • Last Login Time Display
    • Every time a user logs in, the login time is displayed. The last login time of the user is displayed on each login. Users can use this functionality to crosscheck their login sessions and activities.
    • If a user is already logged in to another machine, the last login time still displays the latest login time of the user. Last login time is not dependent on whether the user has logged off or not.
  • Session Time-Out
    • If the user has logged in to the system, but is inactive for some time (specified by admin), the session times out. The user needs to login again. Any unsaved data gets lost when a session times out. The session timeout duration is configurable by the administrator at the web server level; however, the default is set to 30 minutes. Multiple sessions can run simultaneously on the same or different machines.

Data Scope of Personnel

Data scope denotes the data accessibility of users in an MFI. It refers to the data a user can view and also the data on which a user’s permissions apply (like, edit, and create). The data scope is defined and limited by two factors: the user’s personnel hierarchy and the office hierarchy.

  • Limiting the scope by personnel hierarchy: There are two levels of personnel hierarchy in any MFI, “Loan Officer” and “Non-Loan Officer”.
    • If a user belongs to “Loan Officer” hierarchy, the user’s data scope is limited to his/her own clients only. For example, if the user has “modify client data” permissions, he/she is able to edit only his/her clients and not the clients assigned to other Loan Officers.
    • If the user belongs to “Non-Loan Officer” hierarchy, the data scope is limited to the user’s office and other child offices. That is, a Non-Loan Officer with required permissions at an AO is able to view and edit other Loan Officers’ client records belonging to the same office or the respective child offices.
  • Limiting the scope by office hierarchy: The data scope of any user is limited to his/her office and the respective child offices only. For example, if a Non-Loan Officer at HO has “Modify” permission, the user has access to all the client records in all the BOs under the HO. However, a Non-Loan Officer with “Modify” permission at a BO has access to client records in that office only, and not to any higher-level offices.
last modified 2007-10-17 11:25
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