Playbook, university
The reset link works, but not for the people who are asking
Self service reset is built for the student who completed their recovery details during enrolment and can still receive the code. Almost nobody who opens a chat window is that student. They are the new starter who never finished the setup, the returning student whose phone number has changed, or the finalist whose password expired in submission week. Each of them needs an identity check, and no software on a website can perform one.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for password resets holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- Recovery details are collected once during enrolment and never thought about again, so the population that cannot self serve is exactly the population that asks: new starters, students back from an interruption, and anybody who changed their number.
- The identity check is normally done in person against photo identification, or through a defined remote equivalent, which makes this one of the few questions on a university site where the correct answer is a physical desk and its opening time.
- Passwords commonly expire on a cycle that lands near the start of teaching, so a wave of these arrives in the same fortnight every year, and the useful answer includes when the expiry falls rather than only how to reset.
- The applicant portal has its own reset on its own form, and sending an offer holder to the student route is a dead end that costs them a day at a point in the cycle where days are the unit that matters.
How it arrives
- i forgot my university password
- the reset link is not working
- i changed my phone and cannot get the code
- my password expired can you reset it
- how do i reset my applicant portal password
- who do i see to get my account unlocked
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The self service reset route and the precondition on it | The link, and a plain statement that it only works where recovery details were registered. Putting the precondition first saves the people it will not work for from trying it three times and then writing to you anyway. |
|---|---|
| The identity verification route | What identification is accepted, where to take it, the hours of that desk, and whether a remote equivalent exists. This is the answer for most people asking, and it is usually the least visible page in the set. |
| The password expiry cycle | How long a password lasts, what warning is given and when the wave lands. One sentence, and it turns a support ticket into something a student does in advance. |
| The applicant portal reset, named separately | A different system with a different form. If the material does not name it apart from the student route, every offer holder gets sent to the wrong one. |
The reply
The self service reset works if you registered recovery details at enrolment and can still receive the code, and the link is on our IT pages [1]. If your number has changed, or you never finished that setup, the reset cannot verify you and you will need the identity check instead: the page says what identification to bring and where [2]. If this is the applicant portal rather than your student account, that has its own separate reset form [3]. I cannot reset a password or unlock an account, and please do not type any credentials here.
It states the precondition before the link, because sending somebody to a form that will fail is worse than saying no. The changed phone number gets a clause of its own since it is the single commonest cause. And it separates the applicant portal, which is the mistake that costs an offer holder a day.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor says the self service reset has already failed, that they cannot receive the code, or that they need access before a deadline today.
I cannot reset anything or verify who you are. The service desk can, and the identification they need is on the page linked here. If you would like them to contact you, leave me your name and an email and nothing else.
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 ask for, repeat or acknowledge a password, a code or a security answer.
- Never say an account has been unlocked or a password has been reset, because nothing here touches an account.
- Never suggest a way round the identity check, since that check is the only thing standing between a stranger and a student record.
- Never tell somebody a reset email is on its way, as the only message sent from here is the enquiry that goes to your own inbox.
Questions
- Could it reset a password if we connected our systems?
- No. It has no write access anywhere and performs no actions, so a reset always ends at the self service link or at the desk. What it removes is the traffic from people who do not know which of those two applies to them.
- Why does this need a page when IT publishes a reset link?
- The link answers the easy case, and every question here is the hard case. Somebody who can self serve never opens a chat window. The material has to lead with the precondition and the identity route, not with the link.
- A student says they need it now for a deadline. What then?
- The desk route and its hours, and nothing that sounds like a promise. If the deadline is genuinely at risk, that is an extenuating circumstances question for the department, and the reply should name that route rather than try to solve the password.
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 password resets in generalAn assistant cannot reset anything. It can walk somebody through your real flow and name the step that usually breaks.
- 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.
- A teacher asks whether they can bring a year groupA teacher bringing a year group needs ratios, a risk assessment and a coach drop off. None of that lives on the open day page.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.