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Tuesday, September 1, 2009

SMB Behavior - A Quick Primer on Security

Applies to: Master Builder 11.x, 12.x, 13.x

The security in Master Builder is a little bit atypical from the usual. Here is a quick primer on the key points of the basics. These basic points proabably cover about 80% of the questions we receive regarding Master Builder security.

Mini-Primer on User Rights in Sage Master Builder

The supervisor account is dedicated and the associated rights cannot be assigned to any other account. Only the supervisor account can be used for certain things including assigning access rights to each screen.
In the 7-3 screen, there are groups and users. Users are provided with a password and assigned a group. Security rights are provided through the groups. Note that there is no way for a user to change their own password, it has to be done by someone with access to the 7-3 screen.
Basic security rights such as the ability to void or save save a transaction and printing checks are then assigned to the group. This is global security right that applies to every screen the group has access to.
Access to a specific or menu item screen is given by going to the menu item as the supervisor, accessing the rights to that menu item by clicking F7. Click on the check box for each group you would like to have access to that screen and all the sub screens. Important: If no check boxes have been checked – everyone has access to that screen.
In each data entry screen, access can also be set by group to specific fields – say the salary field in the 5-2-1 screen in payroll. To set security, click on the field as supervisor, hit F7 and indicate the groups that should have access. The behavior is the same as menu items. If a user does not have access to a field, that will be maintained throughout the program. So, if a report has the salary field on it and the user does not have rights to see the salary field, they will not be able to print the report.

Labels: rights, sage master builder, security, supervisor

posted by Web Master at 11:17 PM 0 Comments

Saturday, August 1, 2009

SMB Performance - Intermittent Slow Response

In a network environment, Master Builder can exhibit very slow performance at intermittent times. In some cases, the slow performance can affect other applications running on the server. One of the common causes for this issue is the Sage Service Host.

The Sage License Server

The Sage License Server is the program that provides a user a license when they log in to Master Builder. This program must run on at least one computer on a network that is running Master Builder. Typically, it is installed on the server that has the shared Master Builder data files. The program runs as a Microsoft Windows service.

To access the Sage Service Host:
1) Login to the computer that is running the Sage License server with an administrator account
2) Click Start Run and enter "services.msc" then hit ENTER
3) Scroll to the service named "Sage Service Host"

The Issue

When working normally, the Sage Service Host is only accessed when a user starts up Master Builder and is assigned a license. This takes a very small amount of resources for the server to execute.

Periodically, the Sage Service Host can begin to "chatter" and start to use large portions of the computer CPU capacity continuously - as much as 50% or even more of the CPU can be dedicated to this service. When this much of the server CPU resources are used by a single program (or "process"), the server does not have enough resources for other programs. In addition to very slow response from Master Builder, there are other strange results that can happen. For instance, users trying to log into the server may be denied access (because the login process cannot be performed), or they may not be able to connect to printers, or they may apparently "lose" a their network drive connections. These are all a result of the server working too hard for the Sage Service Host.

When this type of behavior is exhibited, confirm that the Sage Service Host is chattering:
1) Login to the computer that is running the Sage License server with an administrator account
2) Click Start Run and enter "taskmgr" then hit Enter
3) Click on the "Processes" tab of the Windows Task Manager
4) Scroll down to the "Sage.ServiceHost.Host.exe"
5) Check the CPU usage. This is the percentage of the CPU that the service is currently using.

Typically, the CPU usage for the Sage ServiceHost.Host.exe process should be zero with infrequent peaks of a few percent. If the program is chattering, it will peak at 50% or more and hold the CPU usage continuously.

More Information and Resolution

Labels: sage license host, sage master builder, slow response

posted by Web Master at 7:31 PM 0 Comments