Handling users' login issues
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Diagnosing the issue
In many cases, the user's report is too vague to identify the cause of the problem: "I am unable to log in to my account". Here are questions admins can ask in order to locate the issue prior to solving it.
| Question | Diagnosis |
| Does the user have an account on the site? | This should be the first thing to check. 1. The user might think that the account exists when it does not, for instance, if an admin was meant to create it on their behalf. 2. The account could have been deleted, for instance, by another admin. 3. The account might have been created with an alternative email. To locate the user, an admin should navigate to Participants / Accounts / View, edit user data and use the filter at the top of the page to locate the record. Search for the user's email address or part of it (e.g. its domain). If no record is found, the admin could search for the user's name, or part of it. This could turn up a record created with a different email address. The user might not remember this. |
| Is the user accessing the correct URL? | Occasionally, though rarely, the user might be trying to access the wrong site, for instance, the site of last year's event or the membership site that is referenced on your conference website. |
| Is the Internet accessible or is the COMS server down? | If the COMS site is not accessible, but other Internet sites are, there might be a problem with the COMS server. The admin can check this on their side: if they can access it, others should be able to access it too, provided the Internet is up and running in their location. |
| Is the problem occurring when using the login box? | If the problem occurs after the user submits credentials to the login box and the admin has determined that a record exists for the user, the admin can narrow down the problem to one of three possibilities: 1. The email provided is incorrect. If this happens, the software will display the following error message: " There is no user-id or email address corresponding to your input".2. The password provided is incorrect. In this case, the following message is displayed: " The password you have provided is incorrect. Please try again".3. The login function is blocked for a few minutes after 5 unsuccessful attempts. A message explaining this is displayed in this case, so it is unlikely to trigger a request for support. Ask the user to describe the message they receive or ask for a screenshot. Note regarding the input of login details: if there are blanks added before or after the email or password, they are removed by the software, so they should not be an issue. However, sometimes, an invisible, non-blank, character can be pasted along, in which case the input is seen as wrong by the software (because it is) and correct by the human who copied and pasted it. |
Solving the issue
Once the issue is narrowed down to a problem with the login function, the following solutions can be offered.
| Identified issue | Possible solution |
| The login function rejects the supplied email | Check the user's record, as described above. If a record exists for the user, with a different email address, the admin can, after consulting the user, change the email by editing the user's profile by navigating to Participants / Accounts / View, edit user data. |
| The login function rejects the supplied password | The user can use the password reset function accessible under the login box. They will be asked to provide the email address associated with their account. The software will either find the record and send the email or inform the user that the supplied email address is not associated with any account. |
| The email with the password reset link is not received | An admin can verify that the email was successfully sent out by navigating to Emails / Mail log / Automatic emails. If the email is flagged as sent, but not received, it might indicate that the receiving server rejected the incoming email (flagged as spam or erroneously associated with a blacklisted sender). 1. The user could be advised to check their spam folder, or ask their IT personnel to check and ensure that the COMS domain (conference-service.com) is not blacklisted. 2. An admin can access the profile of the user (see Log in to a user's account), set a temporary password on their behalf, then email this password to the user. This will allow the user to log in and reset their password on their profile page. If the user is not receiving emails sent from the COMS site, the admin should use an alternative way to reach the user. |