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Icare

What is it ?

Icare is a custom "layer" of both frontend and backend, added on top of SkyPortal to provide the features required only by Grandma.

Besides from building on top of SkyPortal, it also provides 2 extensions:

  • SkyPortal-Fink-Client: A tool to pull alerts from Fink and add them to SkyPortal.

  • Grandma data: a set of data needed by Grandma to populate SkyPortal's database, such as telescopes data, instruments data, etc.

Authentication

Full Account Creation Tutorial: User Guide

Users can login to Icare using either their Slack account (for GRANDMA people), ORCID or eduGAIN account. The service used for authentication is called IAM. One benefit of this service is that you will be able to use your standard account, without the need to remember a username and a password specific to Icare. Also you will be able to use any of the authentication methods proposed and still remain the same user in Icare.

Your IAM account will be automatically created the first time you connect to Icare.

Important : Do not try to connect to SkyPortal until your account is verified. If you still did that, you will need to delete your cache/cookies before logging in.

First steps to follow after login in for the first time

First, you will need to head to the Groups page. There, you can request to be added to the groups you are interested in. Exemple: You are a member of GRANDMA, you can ask to be added to the group GRANDMA. You are also interested in seeing alerts from Fink, you can ask to be added to the group Fink.

An administrator of the group will be notified of your request. After accepting it, you will receive a notification (you can see it on the top right hand corner of the screen, it is a bell icon) to tell you that you have been added to the group.

Now, you can explore the rest of the platform.

User permissions and roles

As a new user of SkyPortal, you won't be able to do much at first. Users can have different roles, that come with a predeterminated set of permissions. A user can also be granted a permission without a specific role. To use certain (most) features of the platform, you will need certain permissions. Exemple: You can see the list of telescopes, but you can't add a new one. You can see the shifts, but you can't add or join one. To access those different features, administrators of the platform can provide it to you. You can ask them, but they should take care of it for every user without having to ask them. If you need additional permissions (like the permission to add a source, ...), you can always ask them.

User Guide

You will find a more in depth guide to use Icare on the User Guide page.