Overview
It occasionally happens that users have more than one login account and/or profile in Terra Dotta.This article covers the following topics related to resolving duplicate accounts and merging duplicate profiles in Terra Dotta:
- Staff Login Accounts: Internal vs External.
- Reviewers
- Recommenders: Directory Lookup vs Manual Entry.
- Merge Duplicate User Profiles (Applicant/Student/Scholar): Includes steps for merging more than two profiles and guidance for ISSS offices.
Important Note : Client sites are loaded with functionality to support the broad range of Terra Dotta (TD) enterprise solutions, including ISSS and Study Abroad. Slight variances in terminology may occur depending on the TD solution referenced. For example, this articles refers to both "applications" and "records" which are synonymous. Your site will display the term relevant to your office.
Helpful Reminders
Helpful Reminders
- The ID number in Edit User and Merge User is the User ID. This ID can be found in the URL when viewing a profile as User_ID=XXXXX (where XXXXX is the ID number). For example, the User ID is 12345 in the following URL: https://theterradottauniversity.com/index.cfm?ProfileAdmin.ProfileEdit&userid=12345&Search_ID=222222&FuseAction=ProfileAdmin.ProfileEdit
- A TD profile is not the same as a TD record or application. To permanently remove, or scrub, a TD record/application, is a separate action that is taken by an admin with maintenance permissions. For more information, see the Deleting / Scrubbing an Application and SEVIS Profile: Records Knowledgebase (KB) articles.
Staff Login Accounts
A staff member may have two login accounts for their TD site: an external, non-integrated login and an internal, integrated login. This often occurs as a result of the following scenario:
- During implementation, an external login account is created for a primary admin who then creates external login accounts for relevant office staff. The external login account consists of a user's email address and additional login credentials which are sent to the staff member by automatic email.
- After a site has been integrated with an institution's Secure Campus Login (SCL), an internal login account is created which consists of a UUUID username. This is the login account that staff use to authenticate (i.e. log in securely) going forward in accessing their site.
Are Two Logins Better than One?
Staff are encouraged to log in to their TD site using their internal, integrated login account. With this recommendation, the question is often raised: should staff retain both their internal and external login accounts? The answer comes down to personal preference and an office's best practice. Some staff prefer to keep both login accounts so that a back-up method (i.e. the external login account) is available for use to access the site in the event that a server goes down. Other staff prefer to have only one (internal) login account to avoid confusion and refrain from managing settings in multiple login accounts.Whatever you decide, your staff will need to be mindful of logging in to their TD site with the appropriate login account.
Resolving Duplicate Staff Login Accounts
If you'd like to remove a duplicate login account for a staff member, first confirm the login account to keep. Next, you will need to completely deactivate the login account that will no longer be used. While staff members cannot be deleted from the system, follow these steps to ensure they are only using one login account with administrative access.1) Remove all permissions for the staff member. This is done most effectively in Staff > Staff Permissions by using the search tool to locate the staff member, finding which admin groups they belong to, then going into each group and removing them from that group's members.
2) Remove all user-level assigned permissions after the staff member has been removed from all user groups. This deactivates them although their name will remain in your system.
If you wish to further remove their identity/name and ability to log in under the duplicate login account, do the following:
- Go to Maintenance > Edit User then search for the staff member.
- Select the staff member you wish to edit and click "Next".
- You can now change the user name to something along the lines of "deleted000". They will no longer be able to log in.
- Changing the username should be sufficient, but you can also choose to edit the first name, last name, and/or email address.
- Note: For non-integrated users, you must update the email address before you can update the username (because the username will, in the majority of cases, match the email address). Example: Change test@tdu.edu to test_removed@tdu.edu.
Reviewers
Staff are created as Reviewers within the TD system and can log in, review applications, and post feedback. A reviewer login account can be created in one of the following ways:
Resolving Duplicate Reviewer Login Accounts
If you'd like to remove a duplicate login account for a reviewer, first confirm the login account to keep. Then follow the resolution steps listed above for duplicate staff login accounts.
- If your site is integrated with your secure campus information system, and the reviewer is affiliated with your campus, you can look up the new staff member from your institution's HR Directory.
- You can manually enter the individual's name, email address, and phone number.
- You can retrieve the individual's information by entering their campus login ID.
Resolving Duplicate Reviewer Login Accounts
If you'd like to remove a duplicate login account for a reviewer, first confirm the login account to keep. Then follow the resolution steps listed above for duplicate staff login accounts.
Recommenders
The creation of multiple site login accounts for the same recommender is a scenario that most commonly occurs when the Manual Entry option is available to applicants/users during the recommendation request process in addition to the Directory Lookup option.
When an applicant/user creates a recommendation request using the Directory Lookup, the login account for that recommender is internal. The email sent to the faculty/staff member will instruct the recommender to use your institution's login credentials.
When an applicant creates a recommendation request using Manual Entry, the login account created for that recommender is external. The email sent to the faculty/staff member will include a temporary password for the person to use when logging into your site. In addition, one applicant may manually enter an email address for a recommender that varies from what another applicant provides - or what is being used via the Directory Lookup. With each unique email address that is entered, a new, external login account is created for the recommender. The faculty/staff member is sent an email containing a temporary password to use when logging into your TD site each time.
Currently, a method does not exist for resolving multiple site login accounts for recommenders.
Since recommender access does not involve administrative privileges, the need to remove multiple log in accounts is not urgent. However, a recommender might not be able to view all of the submitted recommendations under a single login account. If this is desired, the manual entry of recommender requests can be disabled if it coincides with your process.
The best practice is to include your faculty and staff (i.e. anyone completing recommendations) in the integrated HR file so that they remain as internal, integrated users in the system. This eases searching on the applicant/user side and avoids the creation of duplicate recommender login accounts.
Ultimately, the only way to fully prevent your faculty/staff from potentially having multiple login accounts in the system is to disable the Manual Entry option. This can be done using the following steps:
1) Navigate to the Settings > System Features page. Click on the "Administrative" tab.
2) Scroll to the section called "Additional Administrative User Types". Under the Recommenders section, uncheck the box next to "Enable Manual Entry (external users)".
3) Click "Update" at the bottom of the page to preserve your changes.
A potential drawback to this action is that it also prevents applicants/users from requesting electronic recommendations from people outside your institution.
When an applicant/user creates a recommendation request using the Directory Lookup, the login account for that recommender is internal. The email sent to the faculty/staff member will instruct the recommender to use your institution's login credentials.
When an applicant creates a recommendation request using Manual Entry, the login account created for that recommender is external. The email sent to the faculty/staff member will include a temporary password for the person to use when logging into your site. In addition, one applicant may manually enter an email address for a recommender that varies from what another applicant provides - or what is being used via the Directory Lookup. With each unique email address that is entered, a new, external login account is created for the recommender. The faculty/staff member is sent an email containing a temporary password to use when logging into your TD site each time.
Currently, a method does not exist for resolving multiple site login accounts for recommenders.
Since recommender access does not involve administrative privileges, the need to remove multiple log in accounts is not urgent. However, a recommender might not be able to view all of the submitted recommendations under a single login account. If this is desired, the manual entry of recommender requests can be disabled if it coincides with your process.
The best practice is to include your faculty and staff (i.e. anyone completing recommendations) in the integrated HR file so that they remain as internal, integrated users in the system. This eases searching on the applicant/user side and avoids the creation of duplicate recommender login accounts.
Ultimately, the only way to fully prevent your faculty/staff from potentially having multiple login accounts in the system is to disable the Manual Entry option. This can be done using the following steps:
1) Navigate to the Settings > System Features page. Click on the "Administrative" tab.
2) Scroll to the section called "Additional Administrative User Types". Under the Recommenders section, uncheck the box next to "Enable Manual Entry (external users)".
3) Click "Update" at the bottom of the page to preserve your changes.
A potential drawback to this action is that it also prevents applicants/users from requesting electronic recommendations from people outside your institution.
1) Confirm which user profile to retain.
2) Copy and paste any profile comments that should be kept into the profile to be retained. Otherwise, these are not preserved in the merge.
3) To ensure that you remove the correct user profile, navigate to Maintenance > Edit User. For each user profile that should not be retained, add an underscore to the email address before the @ symbol (i.e. email@tds.com becomes email_@tds.com). When you proceed with merging profiles, this tip will help you easily see which user profiles to remove and which to retain.
Important Note for ISSS Offices: If you are an ISSS office and need to merge duplicate user profiles, it is important that you retain the user profile containing the SEVIS ID and Academic Objective (AO) record. After the merge is complete, you must integration/re-integrate the user in TD to avoid future issues. This can be done via Maintenance > Edit User. For more details, see the Integrated User Flag / Converting Non-Integrated Users KB article.
When you are ready to proceed, follow these steps:
1) Navigate to Maintenance > Merge User. Two search panels (#1 and #2) will appear.
2) In Panel #1, type in keywords (i.e. last name, first name, email address, user name) for the user profile that is to be retained.
3) In Panel #2, type in keywords (i.e. last name, first name, email address, user name) for the user profile that is to be merged and deleted.
4) Click "Search". Two new panels will appear.
5) In Search Results #1, review the search results and select the user profile you wish to retain as the master profile.
6) In Search Results #2, review the search results and select the user profile you wish to merge.
7) Click "Next". If the user has any active applications/records, they will display on the next page. The information for user profile #1 will remain unchanged while the information for user profile #2 will be re-associated with user profile #1. If you agree with these changes, click "Next" to proceed.
8) The next page brings you to the final step in the Merge process for duplicate user profiles. Several alerts reinforce that the Merge action is irreversible, so review all information on this page carefully. To proceed with the merge, enter the security code provided in the text box and click "Merge".
When the merge is complete, the user profile that has been removed will have *removed (example: samtester@terradotta.com*removed) added to that user's email.
Merging More Than Two Profiles
If a user has more than two profiles, then follow this merge process:
1) Navigate to Maintenance > Merge User.
2) Search for your user profiles using keywords.
3) In Search Results #1, review the search results and select the user profile you with to retain as the master profile.
4) In Search Results #2, review the search results and select one of the user profiles you wish to merge.
5) Click "Next". If the user has any active applications/records, they will display on the next page. The information for user profile #1 will remain unchanged while the information for user profile #2 will be re-associated with user profile #1. If you agree with these changes, click "Next" to proceed.
6) The next page brings you to the final step in the Merge process for duplicate user profiles. Several alerts reinforce that the Merge action is irreversible, so review all information on this page carefully. To proceed with the merge, enter the security code provided in the text box and click "Merge".
When the merge is complete, the user profile that has been removed will have *removed (example: wanda.worm@terradotta.com*removed) added to that user's email.
Let's look at an example to illustrate what needs to happen next and why:
- The remaining user profile for Wanda Worm that needs to be merged has an email address of wanda.worm@terradotta.com associated with it.
- There is now an already-removed user profile that has an email address of wanda.worm@terradotta.com*removed.
- Therefore, if you remove Wanda's remaining wanda.worm@terradotta.com user profile, this will create another user profile with the email of wanda.worm@terradotta.com*removed, which would be a duplicate.
1) Navigate to Maintenance > Edit User.
2) Search for the user and then select the user profile that will NOT be kept in the merge.
3) Click "Next".
4) In the email field, modify the email address to include the underscore (i.e. wanda.worm_@terradotta.com).
5) Click "Update".
6) Navigate to Maintenance > Merge User and follow the prompts to merge the users.
Single User Profiles
Unique, single user profiles cannot be deleted from the system. The best practice is to scrub all applications/records associated with the user profile. The user will be able to log in, but they will not have any active applications/records and their information will not appear in any reports or queries.