User Management refers to a technology that manages user-related information, including roles and profiles, and tracking information. All other technology components such as Ultra Mashup Studio and Player use user management API to authenticate and authorize a user before they are allowed to perform any function.

User Management is integrated with an organization's existing Identity infrastructure to prevent duplication of User identity storage. It therefore enables a Single-Sign-On functionality via such integration.

In organizations that do not currently have an Authentication mechanism, or do not wish to integrate it with our technologies for any reason, a Forms-based authentication mechanism is required.

In a Forms-based system, a User is asked to Sign Up to create an identity with which they can later log in. An activation step ensures that the email address entered by the user is authentic. Once a Sign Up process is complete, users can use their email address and password to log in to use any of the technologies coupled with this authentication system.

It is also straightforward to import a list of user-data into the User Management system to speed up the registartion process. Integrating with an Authentication system (Identity server) also results in the system importing the required information for each user.

Each user in a system is associated with a certain set of attributes and privileges. The attributes together form the user's "Profile", while the privileges form their "Role". In a system that utilizes Ultra Mashup Studio, Player, Ultra Feedback, Ultra Tracking and Content Library, profile attributes contain items such as personal details, organizational details (such as department, designation, skills), preferences, favorites, contents uploaded or referred by the user, Mashups authored by the user, Mashups viewed, related tracking information, feedback responses, ratings and comments given by the user, etc.

Roles in this scenario can be Author, Viewer, Administrator and Visitor (who have not yet signed up). Each role carries its own set of privileges. Roles can be assigned by an Administrator in an organization's context to relevant employees or students. For example, in an eLearning scenario, the HR/Training department members can be authors while rest of the staff can be "viewers" or "learners". An IT Department staff member can be the "Administrator".

Depending on the role carried by the logged in user, the system would allow certain functionalities and not allow others.

Administrators in a system can associate Mashups to specific attribute values in personal profiles. This prevents users with that profile from viewing unrelated content. In an example from corporate compliance, members of the Accounting department need not access trainings related to ISO9001:2000. Similarly, members of the IT support department need not view finance related discussions.

A significant part of User Management is managing tracking and feedback data related to each user. Data on what Mashups has the user watched, what has been the viewing patterns, what were the feedback responses and their scores, what features of the system has the user accessed or tried to access, what Mashups have been authored by the user, what contents were uploaded, etc. are examples of the kind of information the system keeps on each user.