Maintaining File Data Sources SFTP Users

Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) is a method of securely transferring files to your One Model instance.

One Model supports;

1. SFTP Users for a file data source where your data is uploaded directly into the site, or loaded into a One Model hosted SFTP; and
2. SFTP Data Source is where One Model uses a vendor or customer SFTP, a non-One Model hosted SFTP.

What’s the difference between SFTP Users and SFTP Data Source?

1. SFTP Users are created on the One Model SFTP Server.  The One Model application constantly monitors this SFTP server and will pick up a new file whenever it gets uploaded and then transfer the file into the People Data Cloud. Sometimes referred to as the push transfer of files, i.e. customers push the files to One Model.  Customers can create their own SFTP user via the Data menu; enabling the secure transfer (‘push’) of files to the One Model SFTP server for a File Data Source. 

2. SFTP Data Source is where One Model periodically picks up a file from another SFTP server (the customer’s own SFTP server, or from one of their other system providers, e.g. an engagement survey or Recruiting System provider).   In these cases  One Model SFTP Data Source is scheduled a pick-up the file, and if a file is not available at the scheduled time, then One Model will get the file the next time the data source is scheduled to run. This is sometimes referred to as the pull transfer of files. This is explained in this article

Navigate to SFTP Users

Here you can create a new user, edit or delete an existing user, and enter your SSH public key for file transfer certification. 

1. Go to Data 
2. Click Sources:

This will bring you to the Data Sources screen;

3. Click on the “SFTP Users” button on any File data source:

Note: this only applies to File Data Sources, as only these support data uploaded to the One Model hosted SFTP. SFTP Data Sources are for externally supported SFTP servers (such as a vendor), and One Model cannot maintain SFTP Users on these servers.

Clicking on the button in any row will take you to the same pop up window:

Create a new User

To create a new user;

1. Click the + icon in the window, 
2. Enter a username and password (or username and key) to create the credential for connecting to the SFTP server. You can also use the key icon in the Password field to automatically generate a password.

The rules for username are:

• Username must start with the customer identifier (and this is provided for you)
• Username must be unique
• Username must not have a slash
• Username must be completely lower-case

The rules for password are:

• Passwords must be at least 24 characters
• Passwords must have at least one non letter or digit character
• Passwords must have at least one digit ('0'-'9')
• Passwords must have at least one uppercase ('A'-'Z')

3. When complete, click the Save icon and the SFTP user is ready.

Editing an existing SFTP User

To Edit an existing SFTP User, select the Edit button in the main SFTP Users panel:

This will show an Edit User pane, like this:

This pane can be used to enter a new Key or Password for the user if the existing password has been lost, or needs to be updated. The same rules apply as for creating users, and here as well a password can be generated using the key icon.

If the password is updated, any system sending data to One Model will need the new password. For Security reasons, we do not allow the existing password to be retrieved.

Click the Save icon to persist the change.

SFTP user certification

If you require certification or authentication of your SFTP file transfer, you will need your SSH key. 

1. To generate the certificate, you will need to enter the public key portion of your SSH key in the Key field of your SFTP user. 
2. When complete, click the Save icon

Deleting an SFTP User

To delete an existing SFTP User, simply use the Delete icon:

Any system that was using this deleted SFTP User to upload data to One Model will now need to use a different SFTP User to upload that data.

If you have questions about SFTP, be sure to check out our SFTP FAQs here.