How to Unlock a Locked-Out User in EDGEBIC

To unlock a locked-out user in EDGEBIC by User Solutions an administrator selects the account on the Users tab and clicks Unlock, which clears the lockout and the failed-attempt count immediately, without waiting for the automatic 15-minute timer. Lockout is temporary brute-force protection, and the Unlock button is the fast way past it when you trust the person.

This is the narrow task of clearing one lockout. For the reasoning behind lockout, hashing, and the audit trail, read how EDGEBIC protects your schedule data. For the common account pitfalls, see user and permission mistakes.

Before You Start

• You are signed in as an administrator, or with a role that includes the security permissions. The Security tab is hidden from anyone else.
• You have confirmed the lock is genuine, not something else. A deactivated account and a wrong password produce the same sign-in message a lockout does, so glance at the Locked column before assuming.
• You know the defaults: five consecutive wrong passwords lock an account for 15 minutes. Your installation may be set stricter.

Unlocking the Account

1. Open the Settings tab and click the 🔒 Security tab, then the Users sub-tab.
2. Read the grid. A locked account is flagged in the Locked column. If several people report trouble, this column tells you which are actually locked.
3. Select the locked user's row.
4. Click Unlock on the toolbar. The lockout clears and the failed-attempt count resets to zero.
5. Tell the user to try again. Their existing password now works.

Unlock touches nothing except the lock: the password stays as it was, and the roles and active state are unaffected.

What Changes When You Save

Because the automatic timer also clears a lock after 15 minutes, Unlock is really a way to skip the wait when an administrator is present and trusts the account holder.

How to Check It Worked

Refresh the Users grid: the Locked flag should be gone for that account. Then have the user sign in with their real password; they should reach the main window on the first try. If they still cannot get in, the problem is not the lock. Check the Active column, because a deactivated account is refused whatever the password, and consider whether the password itself is wrong, in which case reset it rather than unlock it again.

How Lockout Works

Understanding the mechanism makes the fix obvious. Every failed sign-in increments a hidden counter on the account. When the counter reaches the limit (five by default), EDGEBIC sets a lock that expires after a fixed window (15 minutes by default). During that window the correct password is refused along with every wrong one, which is what makes lockout feel confusing to the person on the other side: they finally type it right and are still turned away.

Two design choices sit alongside this. First, the sign-in message never reveals whether the username exists, so an attacker guessing usernames learns nothing from the wording. Second, every failed attempt and every lockout is written to the security audit trail in the database, so an administrator can see the pattern even though the sign-in screen gives nothing away. Your installation may set the five-attempt and 15-minute defaults tighter, but the shape is the same.

Unlock cuts the window short. Instead of waiting for the timer, an administrator who trusts the account holder clears the lock immediately and resets the counter, so the next correct password gets in. Nothing else about the account moves.

A Quick Worked Example

On Monday morning a supervisor mistypes her password five times before her shift and the account locks. Production is waiting, and 15 minutes is too long. The administrator opens Settings → 🔒 Security → Users, reads the Locked column to confirm hers is the flagged row, selects it, and clicks Unlock. The flag clears, the counter resets, and she signs in on her next attempt with the password she has known all along. Because the password was never the problem, Unlock was the correct action, not a reset. The audit trail records the lockout and the unlock, so the event is on record without any drama.

Common Mistakes

Unlocking when the real issue is a forgotten password. Unlock leaves the old password in place. If the person cannot remember it, they will just fail five more times and relock. When the password is unknown, use Reset password, which clears the lock and forces a new password together.

Confusing lockout with deactivation. Unlock does nothing for a deactivated account. If the Active column is unticked, use Activate / Deactivate first.

Ignoring a repeating lockout. A single mistype is normal. An account that locks on a schedule usually has a stale saved password in another tool or on a second machine, quietly using up the five attempts. Check the audit trail for where the failed attempts originate and fix the source, or the lock returns tomorrow.

Reading the vague sign-in message as proof the account is fine. EDGEBIC deliberately never says whether a username exists, so the sign-in screen looks the same for a lock, a wrong password, and an unknown user. The Locked column and the audit trail are where the truth is.

When to Wait and When to Unlock

Lockout is self-healing: leave it alone and the account frees itself when the timer expires, 15 minutes by default. So there is a legitimate "do nothing" option when the person can afford to wait and no administrator is handy. The Unlock button exists for the cases where waiting is the wrong answer: a shift starting now, a supervisor blocked from logging actuals, a planner locked out with a deadline. In those moments an administrator who trusts the account holder skips the timer with one click.

There is also a judgment call in the other direction. If an account locks repeatedly and you cannot explain why, unlocking it over and over just papers over the cause. A stored password in another application, a scheduled task, or a second signed-in machine can burn through the five attempts on its own, before the person even touches the keyboard. The audit trail is where you confirm this, because it records each failed attempt with enough context to see the pattern. Fix the stale credential at the source, then unlock once, rather than unlocking on a loop.

Next Steps

If the lockout turns out to sit on top of a forgotten password, how to reset a user's password fixes both in one action. For the full task library, see the EDGEBIC how-to hub, and for where account security sits in the wider platform, EDGEBIC.