Playbook, university
An offer holder cannot log in because there is nothing to log in to
Access questions on a university site are usually not faults. They are somebody trying the wrong one of three accounts. An applicant has a portal login issued when they applied. A student has a single sign on account created when enrolment completes, not when an offer is accepted. A graduate has an address that expires on a published date. From the login screen all three failures look identical.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for account access problems holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The student account is created by a step inside enrolment, so an offer holder trying it in August is not locked out, they are early, and saying that in one sentence is the entire answer for a large share of these messages.
- The applicant portal and the student system are separate logins with separate identifiers, and the applicant one usually stops working around the point the student one starts, which is a transition nobody is warned about.
- Access is bound to enrolment status, so a student who interrupts or does not re enrol may lose the account with nothing having gone technically wrong, and the fix sits with registry rather than with a service desk.
- Alumni access to email and to library resources normally ends on a published date after graduation, which makes an access question from a graduate a policy question rather than a fault report.
How it arrives
- i cannot log in with my student number
- when do i get my university email address
- my applicant portal login has stopped working
- i have graduated and lost access to my email
- i interrupted my studies and cannot get in
- what is my username
What has to be indexed for this to work
| A page naming each account with its start and its end | Applicant portal, student single sign on, alumni access: when each is created, what it opens, and the event that ends it. Very few universities publish this in one place, and it answers a large share of these messages on its own. |
|---|---|
| The point in enrolment at which the student account is created | The exact step, and how long after it before the account works. New students ask this through August and September, and the answer is a single sentence that nobody has written down anywhere. |
| What happens to access on interruption, withdrawal and graduation | The rule in each case and the date access ends. Written as a rule rather than as something that once happened to somebody, so the assistant can quote it without implying it applies to this person. |
| The service desk route and what it needs to help | Its own hours, its contact route, and the identification it asks for. The assistant can verify nobody, so the only thing it can do well here is hand over cleanly. |
The reply
There are three separate accounts and the answer depends which you mean. The applicant portal is issued when you apply. The student account, which carries the email address and the learning environment, is created when enrolment completes rather than when you accept an offer [1]. Alumni access runs until the date on our graduation page and then ends [2]. I cannot look up an account, check a username or reset anything. Tell me which of the three you mean and I will point at the right page, or the service desk contact is here.
It reframes the problem before offering a route, because most of these are not faults and a person sent to a desk for something working as designed waits two days to be told the same thing. Naming the enrolment step is what makes the August version of this question answerable at all.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor gives a username, a student number or an email address, or says they are locked out and needs access today.
I cannot see or check any account, and I would rather you did not type a username or a number here. The service desk can verify who you are. Leave me your name and an email and I will ask them to contact you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never confirm that an account exists, is active or belongs to anybody, since nothing here can look one up.
- Never ask for a student number, a username or any part of a password.
- Never tell an offer holder they ought to have a student account already, because it is created at enrolment and saying otherwise sends them to a desk that cannot help.
- Never say alumni access can be extended, as that is a policy decision with a published date behind it.
Questions
- Can it check whether an account has been created?
- No. It cannot query a system or look anybody up. What it can do is state the rule about when accounts come into existence, which resolves most of this volume without anybody being looked up at all.
- Should it handle these when a service desk exists?
- The desk is the right place for faults. Most of this traffic is not faults, it is people asking which account they should have and when. Answering that from published material is what leaves the desk free for the real ones.
- What if somebody types a password into the chat?
- Write the handover wording so it never invites credentials and states plainly that no account can be checked. If it happens anyway, the reply should tell them to change it and send them to the desk.
Keep reading
- Everything for a universityApplicants and enrolled students ask different things. What a university assistant can answer about entry, fees and visas, and what it must never predict.
- Handling account access problems in generalLocked out, wrong email, a colleague who left, no admin remaining. Identity cannot be checked in a widget, so explain, collect, hand over.
- The reset link works, but not for the people who are askingSelf service reset works only where recovery details were set at enrolment. Everyone else needs an identity check no widget can perform.
- A technical fault with a deadline attached to itSome campus IT questions are ordinary and one is not. What to say when a fault has an assessment clock running behind it.
- An empty timetable is usually a step, not a faultOnline enrolment, the document check, module registration and the card each unlock the next. Most questions here are ordering questions.
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