Network Users  

See Network and Security for information on setting up your network.

You must have user passwords on every computer to comply with HIPAA. These passwords are a part of Windows, not EZ2000 Plus Dental. If a computer is not in use for a while, then it should be set to automatically log out. Anyone needing to use that computer would have to enter a password to log back in.

Small Office
A small office is typically 10 computers or less.  A small office will usually not have a server, but will instead designate one of their workstations as the "server", and use a peer-to-peer workgroup instead of a domain.  In this kind of office, computer security is more relaxed.  You do not create separate users for each employee; everyone just uses the same administrator user on each workstation.  It is recommended that the user name for the administrator on each machine be the same for best interoperability between versions of Windows. By default and standard convention, the username is always "Administrator".

In this situation, the purpose of the user and password is simply to keep unauthorized users from accessing patient records. The password prevents the weekend cleaning crew, patients, repair technicians or others from accessing the data. It would not restrict employees' activities on the computers. If you have a computer with files that you want to keep private, you could give the standard user account limited privileges and then create an administrative account for yourself.

Large Office
A large office with more than 10 computers will typically use Windows Server 2008, Standard Edition.  While there are many different ways to do it, we describe below a typical and suggested configuration.

Domain Name:  Name your domain with two words separated by a period. Do not use any of the reserved words at the bottom of this page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/909264, with the exception of "local".  Also, do not use top-level domain names such as .com or .net.  Examples of good intranet domain names would be smith.local, john.smith, mydomain.smith, or internal.domain.

Security Groups:  There is a security group called Domain Users, and another called Domain Admins.  You may use those two groups, or add your own additional groups.

Users: Create a user for each employee.  Make each user part of the Domain Users group.  For example, if the user is Rachel, then then she would log on at any computer as Rachel@mydomain.smith (this can also be displayed as mydomain.smithRachel or mydomainRachel).

Local Users: The users on local computers are different than the domain users.  Go to each computer, right click on Computer, Manage. Go to the Groups tab.

On a medium-sized network typical of a dental office, you will probably want all domain users to have full Admin access on most of the local computers.  This simplifies installation of software, computer management, etc.  Double click on the Administrators group above.

Click the Add button

Type the first few letters of the group name, and click Check Names

Highlight the group that you want to add, probably Domain Users, and click OK.  Again, here is the example of the users and groups who are part of the local Administrators group. 

Notice that there is one domain group and one or two local users that are all part of the local Administrators group.