Defining CRM users in CiviCRM Standalone

In CiviCRM Standalone, a CRM user is simply a contact who is allowed to login by OpenID. You can enter the contact's OpenID URL in the Primary Location stanza when editing the contact's details.

When entering an OpenID from http://myopenid.com, you should make sure that the URL ends with the trailing slash, or your contact will not be able to log in.

When editing the contact's details, there is a checkbox next to the OpenID field, saying "Allowed to Login". Checking this box will turn your contact into a CRM user.

There is a bugin Civicrm versions 2.0.2 to 2.0.5 which prevents this checkbox from being displayed. Until a stable version is released which includes the fix you can either edit the field in the backend database directly, or use this version of civicrm/CRM/Contact/Form/OpenID.php.

Permission

By default, new contacts with login privilege will have very restricted access to CiviCRM features. To give them more access, you need to make them a member of a group that has rights. For instance, if you add them to the Administrators group they will have total control of the CiviCRM installation.

If a login attempt fails, under certain circumstances CiviCRM will remove the contact from the group they belonged to.