Configure VPN... is greyed out and I cannot edit my VPN settings

Network Manager VPN support is based on a plug-in system.

The network-manager-pptp plugin is installed by default.

For OpenVPN, install these packages:

sudo apt-get install network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome

Then restart your network-manager:

sudo systemctl restart network-manager

Open the Network connections program. Click on Add. Select PPTP (or OpenVPN) under the VPN section. Fill in your settings and save.

Eventually, you should be able to select a VPN config in the previously greyed out zone.

I'm hitting the same problem on 2 different 12.04 desktop machines. I'm pretty sure the problem got introduced with the following update that came in on 2/2/2015

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/network-manager-applet

BTW, you can still access the configure side of the VPN by running the "nm-connection-editor" from terminal session.

I don't know why they killed the applet selections for "Configure" and "Disconnect" VPN in the latest update. The change log didn't say anything about that https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/precise/+source/network-manager-applet/+changelog