User Management

Control who can access Connectware and what they can do there.

This section covers everything from creating your first users to integrating with your corporate identity provider, along with the roles and permissions in between.

Managing users and roles requires the connectware-admin role or equivalent permissions.

Authentication and Authorization

Two distinct concerns govern access in Connectware:

• Authentication — verifying identity. Who is this person or system, and can they log in? Connectware supports local username/password, single sign-on via Microsoft Entra ID or LDAP, and certificate-based authentication for MQTT clients.

• Authorization — controlling access. What can an authenticated user do? Authorization is managed through permissions assigned to roles, which are then assigned to users.

Keeping these concepts separate helps when troubleshooting access issues: if a user cannot log in, the problem is authentication; if they can log in but cannot access something, the problem is authorization.

The Authorization Model: Users, Roles, and Permissions

Connectware uses role-based access control (RBAC), built on the following components:

• Permissions — a single access right to a specific resource, either an MQTT topic or an HTTP endpoint, with read, write, or read/write access.

• Roles — a named collection of permissions. Roles let you define a permission set once and apply it to many users.

• Users — a known identity (a person or a software client) that has one or more roles assigned, and optionally individual permissions on top.

Permissions are grouped into roles. Roles are assigned to users.

Manage access through roles rather than assigning permissions directly to users. This keeps your access control consistent and easy to audit: when a team member changes responsibilities, you update one role rather than every affected user.

Connectware includes the following built-in roles:

• connectware-admin — full administrative access to Connectware and all its features.

• minimum-access — read-only access to the Admin UI with no data permissions. A useful baseline for users who need visibility without write access.

What's in This Section

Topic	What you'll find
Initial Setup	Where to start: the setup workflow for a new installation
Users	Creating, editing, and deleting users; assigning roles and permissions
Roles	Creating and managing roles; built-in roles reference
Permissions	How permissions work; MQTT and HTTP permission syntax; viewing all permissions
Access Control for Admin UI	Controlling which Admin UI features are available to each role
MQTT Client Access	Authentication options for programmatic MQTT clients (password and mTLS)
Multi-Factor Authentication	Adding a second factor to local and LDAP user accounts
Single Sign-On	Integrating with Microsoft Entra ID or LDAP

Connecting Machines and Devices

For machines and hardware devices connecting to Connectware over MQTT, use the Client Registry rather than manually creating user accounts. It provides:

• Self-registration — devices register themselves via MQTT or REST API.

• Controlled approval — an administrator reviews and approves each registration request.

• Certificate support — devices can authenticate with signed certificates instead of passwords.

• No default permissions — newly registered devices start with no access, giving you precise control.