Account Onboarding for Students

Overview

New students are able to set up their Tufts Accounts (Tufts Username & Tufts Password) via the account onboarding process. In a revision published for March 4th 2014, students will have two methods by which they will be able to use account onboarding:

1. Existing "Early Email" solutions for ASE Grad and Undergrad systems will continue to function. These rely on the admissions group hosting an online portal that students log into and then are securely passed on to the TTS Account Onboarding process.
2. Released in March 2014, the TTS Account onboarding process will now also support challenging the student with three questions which are shared secrets between Tufts and the individual. These challenges are:
   • Personal Email Address given to tufts during the admissions process, provided by the student
   • Birth Month (MM) and Day (DD) of the student, a shared secret.
   • Student ID number, provided by the admissions team.

Schools/Programs using Early Email:

With the addition of the 2014 March release to account onboarding, all schools and programs are eligible to use the Early Email process, although each school must collect the three requirements in order to function.

Early Email Process:

Below is a walkthrough start to finish of the early email process showing "option #2" Option #1 is identical with the exception of the fact that the Admissions website performing the redirect doesn't challenge the student with the three secrets.

1. The test early-email website requires the user is connected to the Tufts VPN. To download the Tufts VPN, visit vpn.tufts.edu, or look for NetWork Connect in your installed programs on your Tufts machine.
2. https://tuftstools.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/student
3. 
4. Enter the three requested shared secrets, and approve.
   • All three secrets need to match to proceed. If any of the three are incorrect, the system will not identify which for security reasons.
5. 
6. The private email will look like this and will contain an encrypted token which will skip the first step.
7. 
8. Upon passing authentication, you will be asked to accept the University Responsible Use policy. If you have already accepted it before, you will not be asked again.
   • You must accept the policy to continue. Declining will offer contact information for the appropriate Dean of Students
   • Cancelling registration will provide contact information for the Admissions group related to your enrollment at Tufts
9. You will be prompted to confirm the name on record for your account is correct
10. 
    • Accepting this will set your Tufts Username, cancelling or declining the format of your name will provide contact information for the appropriate support group.
11. Next you will be asked to set your Tufts Password. This password must comply with Tufts complexity standards
12. 
13. Students will be offered the option to have a forwarding address for their Tufts mail account. This will have all mail sent to a forwarding location
14. 
15. You will be prompted to opt in to the emergency notification system. This system is used to communicate emergencies on any of the three Tufts Campuses and is only used for testing or real-emergency situations. This will allow you to enroll a cellphone for notification.
16. Finally, we will create an email account for you. This step can take some time. (5-10 minutes.)
17. 
18. A summary screen will show account information, as well as important configuration steps
19. 
20. A Summary email will be sent to the students private email address to confirm the transaction as well as provide links to other student-focused services.

Common Questions with Self-Service Account Registration:

Student successfully completes early email process but can't log into Email

The early email process asks students to wait at least 45 minutes before logging in to Exchange. In most of these cases, the student has not waited long enough, so Automatic Account Creation has not occurred. With the March Release, this time delay is brought down to 10-15minutes.

Email Address "has numbers in it"

Some students have common first and last names. Each email alias at Tufts must be unique. In order to help a student provision an account quickly, a set of numbers may be appended to their last name. If they'd like to have these numbers changed, it can be fixed within TuftsTools.

Student input does not match our records

This error message means that, for some reason, the student's record is not flowing from the Student Information System yet. Look the student's account information up in TuftsTools, if you cannot find the account, then contact the Admissions registrar and the Person Registry team for troubleshooting assistance in why the account may not be automatically flowing.

• Common causes for this:
  • Conflict/collision of other identities that look like this student being held up in another portion of the identity system.
  • Student account hasn't been flagged in iSIS yet as an upcoming student

Another potential cause for this is actual data mismatch. It is possible that the private email address, birthday, or student identification number are not actually functioning properly.

Creating the Mailbox in o365 takes a long time

Unfortunately this is a function of the number of systems that need to coordinate between Tufts and Microsoft. In our time trials this takes 5-10 minutes at most.

Bounced email immediately after account creation

In some circumstances, email sent from outside of Tufts (i.e. Gmail) may bounce temporarily to the new email mailbox, this only lasts between the time of synchronization between Tufts and Microsoft. At most this should exist for 1 hour post creation.

Student cannot log in to (X) immediately after provisioning

Some systems (such as iSIS) require copies of the new account to replicate through our environment before they can be used. While most services will allow access immediately, it is possible for iSIS and other applications that require replication that up to a day may be required for all the Tufts systems to become aware of the newly provisioned account.

When setting the student password, there is an error with creating the emergency notification account

This is a systems communication error that should be escalated to ESS. Important to note that the creation of the account is actually successful, only the creation of the emergency notification account failed.