Troubleshooting Common Login Issues

Overview

SS&E users are authenticated either by their username or their primary email address displayed on their Person record in Administration - People & Roles - People - Institution Id found here.

If searching People Administration by username or primary email address returns multiple person records, all "duplicates" must be resolved (via Person Override) so that these users can log in.

• If a user must authenticate with a different email address, enter the authenticated email address on the Person Override menu in their primary "email Address" field.
• For more information about setting Person Override values, click here.
• Users displayed on the Person data feed view and in People Administration cannot be deleted from the SS&E database via the UI, however they can be deactivated.
• To learn more about deactivating an SS&E user, click here.

"Your user account (email address) has not been setup" 

If you see this message, it means that the user authentication with your authentication provider was successful, however, SS&E was unable to figure out which user in the SS&E database matches the identity information received from your authentication provider.

SS&E will attempt to find the user in the SS&E database using the following steps:

• SS&E first attempts to find the user trying to login by matching the "username" field in the SS&E database with the user's identity, as provided by the authentication provider.
• If there are no matches between the provided username and the SS&E database, and the username contains an '@' character, SS&E attempts to find users by matching with the primary "email address" field in the SS&E database to find the user's identity.
• When this message appears for a user trying to login, it is expected that an Administrator would still be able to impersonate the user successfully. The reason is that the Admin user knows who the user is, yet the system by itself cannot identify who the correct user is which is why the message appears.
• If an Admin user is unable to impersonate the user, then most likely the user is set to Inactive. By design, inactive users are not allowed to login to SS&E or to be impersonated.
• Something else that may cause this message to appear is an unintended mismatch between the SSO email address and the primary email address included in SS&E. For example, if the primary email address includes a space at the very end of the email address this message will display and the user will not be able to login to SS&E. To fix this, enter the primary email address without any extra spaces on the Person Override menu.

If the above steps only find one user, then the user is able to login to SS&E.

However, if these steps result in either no user found or more than one user/multiple users found, the system displays the following message "Your account (email) has not been setup", and the user is not allowed to log in to SS&E until the underlying issue is corrected. 

• If the user is set to Inactive, an administrator can re-activate the user in People Administration if deactivated by mistake.

To resolve this message:

1. Search for the email address included in the error message in People Administration.
2. If the username is empty and not listed in SS&E, add the correct/missing "username" to the Person Override menu, verify this populates on the Person Details, then try to login or impersonate the user again to confirm that this resolved the issue.
3. If there are multiple users with the same email address, use the Person Override menu to add a blank space to the duplicate email address(es) associated with inactive/duplicate user(s).
   • After overriding the "duplicate" person record with an empty space/fake value on the duplicate person record in the SS&E database, then the "correct" person record should be the only record found and allowed to log in.
4. If there are no users found with the email address displayed in the error message, verify with your IT staff why the user is associated with this specific email address that is not displayed on their person record in SS&E. Once the email address is verified and if found to be correct, then add it to the Person Override menu to allow the user to log in. If the email address displayed in the error message "Your user account (email address) has not been setup" is incorrect, ask your IT staff to correct this and associate the correct email address to the user account. If the correct email address displays on the person record then this will allow the user to log in. Otherwise, add the correct email address to the user's person override.
5. If the Override menu displays an empty field that is gray and there is an x on the far right, this indicates that the override value is set to an empty space/multiple empty spaces.
   • When an Override field is set to an empty space(s), this "deletes" any existing value from the database.
   • To remove the "empty space(s)" override value, click on the x to remove the override value.

A Student Cannot Log In

In order for a student to log in to SS&E, they must have either a primary advisor or a primary coach (someone on their "primary" success team) assigned to them on their student profile. If this is not the case, they will not be able to log in.

A Student/Staff User Cannot Log In

The most common reason a user cannot log in to SS&E is that there are multiple records assigned the same username and/or primary email address.

To determine if this is the issue, from SS&E- Administration - People & Roles - People - Enter the username/primary email address of the user that is reporting login issues to search for additional SS&E users with the same primary email address/username.

• If more than one person record has the same username or primary email address assigned, this will prevent each user from being able to log in, as the system does not know which is the 'correct' user.

Messages/events that may sometimes indicate this is the problem are:

• "Failed to login. Please ensure that you have access and try again."
• The user does not get an error message, however, when trying to "Impersonate" the user from their person record, the Impersonate function does not work.

Note: It does not matter if the "duplicate" person is set to Inactive. The duplicate username and/or email address must still be removed/overridden, even when the "duplicate" person is Inactive.

The quickest way to resolve this is to use the 'Override' menu from SS&E-> Administration -> People & Roles -> People, using the following steps: 

1. Search the People screen by email/username to check if there are duplicate person records associated with the same username/primary email address.
   • Note: It does not matter if the duplicate user(s) is "Not Active".
2. If yes, select the duplicate Person record(s).
3. Select "Override" from the top menu bar.
4. On the duplicate user Override menu, enter a space to "remove" the duplicate username and/or email address.
5. Save this change. After you save the new/empty value the field will turn gray and since the new value is nothing, this essentially removes the duplicate email address from the database. 
6. Try logging in and impersonating the correct user.

• The goal is to override the username/email address to something other than what the duplicate user is currently assigned so that the user attempting to log in will be able to, as a duplicate will no longer be found.
• Oftentimes, if the correct email address is unknown, entering an empty space will immediately remedy this by removing the duplicate, allowing the user to log in.

Sorry, we were not able to find a user with that username and password

 This usually means that the user is not being successfully authenticated by the institution and the underlying issue will have to be resolved by the institution's IT department.

For more information, click here.

Wrong Email Domain

If your organization is using Google authentication, the SS&E Engage configuration is set up to only allow specific Google accounts to log in. This prevents someone with a non-organizational email account from somehow authenticating into your instance of SS&E. Therefore, SS&E needs to be configured with all the possible email domains that could be used. If a user receives the following message when trying to login:

Wrong Account

You tried to use email address "{email}" to login, but you must use your account from {institution}. Please try again with your institution account.

This often means the domain of the email address you're using to login is wrong. For example, if you use your personal Google account accidentally, that account will typically have an @gmail.com account. Even if that email address matches the username of a user in the SS&E system, you will not be allowed to authenticate. You'll need to use the Google account given to you by the institution. 

Sometimes sub-domains are used for Google accounts - something like @students.myschool.edu instead of just @myschool.edu. In this case, the sub-domains also need to be configured in the SS&E application as acceptable domains in order for those accounts to be used to log in.

Login Slowness

If the login process is slow yet once logged in the SS&E screens respond quickly, this indicates an issue with the authentication provider that should be escalated to your local IT department. If there is an error, please open an SS&E support ticket for further investigation.