Passwords

Hi Everyone-

As part of our contribution to the New Year's excitement, we are changing the way we authenticate users. Because of this you may find that your current password no longer gets you into D2L. The bottom line: If your password no longer gets you into D2L use the change password link on the D2L login page to change your password. The new password will take effect immediately, no waiting. Remember that the 24/7 help desk is available if you need some assistance late at night. (http://help.cccs.edu/)

Why: All of the colleges are gradually turning on portals. Once a college has the portal available they have single sign on to D2L and a variety of other products. They also have instant password changes - no waiting a couple of hours for the batch upload to occur. That is really great and something we have wanted for a long time. The challenge from our perspective is that the portals at the colleges are being turned on over a two semester time period, so we have some students and faculty in the portal and some who are not.

CCCOnline will also have a portal that we will use to consolidate the location of most of the information you need into one location. We hope to be up and running with that in March.

How authentication worked in the past: We all used the 6 digit SSB password. CCCOnline uploads those to D2L and Vista every 2 to 4 hours. That meant that your SSB password and your D2L password were kept in synch, but if you teach for a school already using the portal, that password is different. Because more and more information is gradually being placed in the portal (such as payroll information) logging in twice with separate credentials is a hassle.

How authentication works now: LDAP is a new password database. D2L and the portals are both authenticating against that database. If you work at a school that has turned on LDAP authentication (such as CCCOnline) then D2L will look at the LDAP database to make sure you have the correct password. If you changed your portal password from your SSB password to something else then you will now have the new password in D2L also.

Back to the bottom line: If your password doesn't work just follow the link on the D2L login page to change it.

Lisa Cheney-Steen