How to manage active/inactive users ?

[Bulubulu]

Hello,

Could you confirm to me that it is possible to create an application in which I can add users by defining which ones are active?

Indeed, I would like to be able to add collaborators temporarily for a given project and then be able to deactivate them when the project is finished, so as not to generate unnecessary additional costs. I would also like to be able to reactivate an account in the event of a new collaboration, without the user having to recreate their account.

How and where is it possible to manage which users are active? Do I have to manually change my subscription plan each time I add, activate or deactivate a user?

Could you please help me to understand how it works?

[WillowMobileSys]

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@Bulubulu wrote:

Could you confirm to me that it is possible to create an application in which I can add users by defining which ones are active?

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Yes you can!  There are 2 ways:

1)  You can explicitly list the valid users of an app in the app users white-list.  See image below.  To deactivate a user, remove them from the list.  They will not be able to access the app but any account registration entries they've made will remain in your tables.  To reactivate, simply add them back into the list and they will be able to continue using app just as before.  This is the most secure method by requires someone access the AppSheet Editor to make the app change.

2)  Build a custom "deactivation" feature in your app.  It sounds like you already have some kind of users table.  Add an "Active?" column to this table and set it for each user based on their active status.  Then use a Slice to filter to the Active users.  If a user accessing the app is not active, then hide all the desired app views from this user.  (Each view has a Show If property to hide/show them based on criteria.)  Reactivate them by setting their Active? status back to true.  The benefit of this approach is that is can be managed from the deployed app by any designated user but it is less secure.

I hope this helps!

EDITED:   Oops!  Forgot the image

How/Where to white-list users for best security

[dbaum]

Re #2, keep in mind that if inactive users access the app (e.g., it's left open on their device)  even if they have no access to any data they'll contribute to your account's app user count and subscription cost.

FYI: More info related to this general topic at  SUMMARY TIP: User permissions, roles, and settings - Google Cloud Community . 

[WillowMobileSys]

Very good point! 

I should have explicitly pointed out that the implication of #2 is that the app has "Allow all signed-in users" turned on - which means ANY user with the app link can access the app IF they have setup the appropriate account in the specified authenticator service dictated by the app config and will count towards the number of user subscriptions billed by AppSheet.

NOTE:  You can still use the method in #1 AND still have a customer registration for details, roles and permissions.  The app simply has more finite control over allowed/not-allowed users.