You can optionally install what are called PSAs (PCBoard Supported Allocations). These are features that are added into your users file.

A supported allocation is a module you can add to your users file which both PCBoard and System Manager are able to understand and manipulate. These allocations are quite similar to TPAs you can install for doors. The difference is that PSAs are officially recognized by PCBoard and are used to add new features to your system. The following PSAs are available:

Enables a user to use an alias in those conferences which have been designated to allow aliases.

Gives you the ability to store street, city, state, zip code, and country information for each user on your system.

Gives you the ability to force your users to change their passwords over a pre-determined amount of time.

This PSA will store the response to the question asked when a new account is created on your system. You can use this response to help verify the validity of the caller.

Provides additional statistics about each user on your system. Records statistics such as security violations, speed of connections, etc.

Provides you five additional comment lines which you can store information about each user. These lines may be useful for jotting down general notes.

First of all, you need to make sure all nodes on your system are down – you cannot add a PSA while nodes are online.

To add a PSA to your system, select Add PCBoard Supported Allocations from the User Info File Maintenance menu in System Manager. Choose the PSA you wish to add to your system from the menu presented to you. Next, you will be shown information about the PSA you are about to install and are asked to confirm you wish to continue with the installation.

If you received an error which said there was a sharing violation with USERS.INF, this indicates all of your nodes are not down or something is accessing your USERS.INF file. System manager needs to have exclusive access to that file before it can add a PSA.

When you add a PSA, the size of your USERS.INF file will increase in size.
The following lists shows how many bytes the file will increase for each users on your system:

If you have 2000 users in your system, your USERS.INF will grow by 60,000 bytes if you add the Caller Statistics PSA.

The following section gives specific details as far as what you can expect after you install each PSA in your system. You will know what changes will be made to your system operation and how to access the various information that each PSA provides.

Alias support is added on a conference by conference basis. After you have installed the Alias PSA in System Manager as outlined in the previous section, you need to configure which conferences will enable alias support.

When you are editing conference information, you can press PgDn to access conference switches. You will see an option labeled Allow Aliases to be used. If you want aliases to be used in the conference you are editing, change this option to Y.

In order for a user to define the alias they wish to use, the W user command must be used. Alias names can only be changed or created in conferences that have been defined to allow Aliases. The name entered must be unique – it cannot duplicate any user or alias name currently in use on the system. In PCBSetup | Configuration Options | System Control there is an option which reads Allow Alias Change After Chosen. When this option is set to N, a user must request any alias changes be done by you. Otherwise, the alias name can be changed at will by using the W user command.

At any time, you can edit or view the alias for any given user through System Manager by editing the user's record. Press F2 until you get to the Alias support screen. On this screen, you will see the alias name the user has chosen. If the field is blank, the user has not defined an alias.

If you are editing the user record and you press F2 several times but do not see the Alias support screen, chances are you have not installed the Alias PSA. To make sure you have installed the PSA, check the list of installed TPA Areas in System Manager | User Info File Maintenance | List Installed TPA Areas. When you select this option, you should see a TPA called PCBALIAS. If you do not, you have not installed the alias PSA yet.

Aliases are only active when a user joins a conference that has been defined to allow aliases. In the rest of the conferences, the user's real name is always used. Of course with users switching between their real name and alias name upon joining conferences, hiding the name change becomes important to protect the identity change.

To help protect the alias, there is an option in PCBSetup | Node Configuration which asks Show ALIAS Names in WHO Display. If you answer Y to this question, PCBoard will modify the node display to show that a user is logging in under that node where the name change is occurring. This will remain for approximately one minute before it changes the actual name in the node display. On the other hand, if you answer N to this question, real names will always be displayed even when a conference is joined where aliases are allowed.

Two other changes are made in the way PCBoard operates in order to protect the alias identity.

While inside a conference where aliases are allowed, the security level requirement for the USERS command is changed to become equal to that which is required to use the 7 SysOp function. This enables you to still use the USERS command while making it impossible for normal callers to access the command. If users could access the command, they may be able to simply compare logon dates/times to figure out the real name of a particular user.

The City/State information normally shown by the WHO user command or the 11 SysOp command will not be shown when a user is using an alias. If that information were available to all callers, it would make it easier for other users to figure out the true identities of those using aliases.

When a user has defined an alias either the real name or alias of the user can be used to login to the system. If the user chooses to login using the alias and the conference joined at login is not an alias conference, PCBoard will properly use their real name instead of their alias.

If you want to keep track of addresses for each of your users, install the Address PSA. This PSA, will store lines for the street address, city, state, zip code and country.

If you have the Address PSA installed, new users will be asked to provide address information when the registration questions for createing a new account on the system are asked. If you have existing users on your system who have not entered their address information, you can tell your users to use the W user command to update their address information, or you can use a PPE that is designed to assure that every user has a valid address. On Salt Air (the support BBS for Clark Development) you will find a PPE which will do this under the filename GET-ADRS.ZIP.

If you clear out any of the PCBTEXT records between 699 and 704 with MKPCBTXT, those questions will not be asked. This would be useful if you want to eliminate a question such as Country from being asked.

The address information can be edited via the W user command or by loading System Manager and editing the user record (Pressing F2 to switch between views). When you use the 7 SysOp Command to edit a user record, you can view the address information but you cannot change it.

When you install the Password Changing PSA, you add the capability to force your callers to change their password over the period of time that you specify.

PCBoard will keep track of the last date the password for each user was last changed, the number of times they have changed it, and the last three passwords used. By accessing the last three passwords used, the user will be prevented from toggling between two or three passwords. In addition, the passwords chosen must contain the minimum number of characters as defined in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits and must also not contain either the first or last name of the user.

If you load System Manager and access a user's record, you can look at the password information by pressing F2 until you get to the Password Form screen. On this screen you will see information such as the last three passwords used, the last date the password was changed, etc. The Expiration Date is used to determine when this particular user needs to change their password. When the password is expired, the user cannot login to the system until a new valid password is entered. The following restrictions are in place for the new password:

The new password must meet the minimum length requirements specified in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits.

Users may not use their name as their password. For example, a user named James Brown could not use either James or Brown as his password.

Of course, if you want to expire a particular user's password, edit their user record so the password expiration date is equal to or earlier than today's date.

You can control how often a user needs to change their password by changing the Number Days Before FORCED Password Change in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits. If you want to temporarily disable the Password Changing PSA but plan on enabling it at a later date, enter a value of 0 in this field to disable the Password Changing support.

You can warn callers of the upcoming need to change their password so they are not caught totally off-guard by the request to change their password. In PCBSetup | Configuration Options | Limits the following field can be changed:

Number Days to Warn Prior to FORCED Change

Set this value to the number of days you want to warn the caller before their password will expire. When users log into the system during the warning period, record number 711 in your PCBTEXT file will be displayed to let them know their password is about to expire.

In recent years, automated calling to pick up messages or files has become very popular. Since PCBoard normally displays a simple one-line message to notify the user their password is about to expire, some of your users may miss the warning. If this becomes a problem on your system, you may want to modify this PCBTEXT record so that it displays a file (which can be multiple lines), or even a PPE which can leave a personal message so they could pick up the notification in their automated mail or file runs.

Whatever warning method you ultimately choose, it should be as obvious as possible. Otherwise, your callers who use login scripts, automated calling programs, and such may wonder why they cannot log into the system properly.
For this very reason, it might be advantageous to give a two to three week password expiration warning.

Verification support adds one 25 character field you can use to store information to help determine the validity of a particular caller. If you have the verification PSA enabled, new users will be required to answer the registration question. By default, this question will ask for the maiden name of the caller's mother. However, you can change this to ask any question you would like by using MKPCBTXT to edit record #706 in PCBTEXT.

Once the new user enters the information, it cannot be modified. In fact, users cannot even view the information. The only one who can change or view the verification field is you.

There are a lot of things you could use this verification field for. The following is just a short list:

Birth date. You could modify record #706 in PCBTEXT so the user is asked for their birth date. When you view a user record with the 7 SysOp command you would be able to quickly and easily reference what a particular user entered for their birth date.

Password change request. When a user fails to enter the right password for login, you have the capability of enabling the user to leave a comment. If you have that option enabled in PCBSetup | Configuration Options | System Control, you may want to use a PPE that could ask the user to enter their verification information. If they enter the right information you could use that same PPE to change their password.

System security. If the information you distribute on your system requires you to be conscious about system security, you can use the verification field and a PPE to ask each user to enter the data in the verification field at each login. In essence, this will give the user a second password and would greatly diminish the capability of hacking a user account by the brute force method.

If you enjoy gathering statistics about your callers, you may want to enable the Statistics PSA. PCBoard will keep track of how many times a user has connected to the system, what speed they connected at, and numerous other pieces of information. The following is a sample of the Statistics View available when you are editing a user record in System Manager:

To view this information for a particular user, load System Manager, select Users File Maintenance, and Edit Users File. Next, press F2 until you see the Statistics Form screen.

The following list describes each of the statistics that are tracked:

All of these statistics are stored in your USERS.INF file. Therefore, if you lose your USERS.INF or it becomes corrupted for some reason, you risk the chance of losing your statistics. In addition, you can lose your statistics if you re-create your USERS.INF file via System Manager | User Info File Maintenance | Create User Info File.

You may find the 30 characters you are allocated in Comment 2 for each user may not provide enough space to enter comments about each user. If you need more room, you can install the Caller Notes PSA. If you do, you will find that you have 5 additional 60 characters lines that you can enter comments about each user.

As you can see there is plenty of room to leave comments about any user on your system. The notes section provides a good place where you can enter things you want to remember about a particular user. Since the user cannot edit or even view these notes, you can be as frank as you wish.

There are two methods of viewing information on the various PSAs you have installed. From within System Manager each PSA will have a separate screen.
These screens can only be viewed while you are editing a user record. Press F2 to switch between the various screen views. Normally, the Short Form, Long Form, and Conference screens are the only screens available. However, when you install a PSA, additional screens will become available when you press F2.

When you are viewing PSA information in System Manager, you can also edit the PSA information for each user.

While inside PCBoard, you can also view selected PSA Information with the 7 SysOp command. All PSA information with the exception of the Password Changing, and Caller Statistics can be viewed with the 7 command.

This is the information that will be displayed via the 7 SysOp command if you have all of the PSAs installed and there is information in each PSA. Notice, that only the Alias, Address, Notes, and Verification information is displayed. To edit this information or to view the rest of the PSA information, use System Manager.

To remove a PSA you have installed, you will need to select System Manager | User Info File Maintenance | Remove PSA From User Info File simply select the PSA you wish to remove. If the PSA does exist, you will be asked to confirm that you really wish to delete the PSA. If you the PSA was not installed, you will receive an error message notifying you that you attempted to remove a PSA which is not installed.