User Sign-up
Anonymous users get very limited amount of access on this platform. In most cases, access for anonymous users is restricted to public content. All other activities are restricted to users that are signed up and signed-in. Sign-up is open to all users, although the level of access for signed-in users depends on the organizations they are part of.
User sign-up is a one-time activity and provides access to all the applications hosted on this platform. User sign-up is mandatory in the following cases:
- Getting an entity account set up for your organization;
- Participating in activities on one or more applications;
- Accessing protected content.
Succcessfully signing up generates a user profile for the user on the platform, which forms a digital identity for the user. This digital identity is specific to the user signing up and is not shared with any other user.
A. Before signing up
Before signing up, please make sure of the following:
- Ensure that you have an active email account.
- If you have a corporate email account provided by the organization you work for, please sign up with your corporate email address;
- You could also sign up with a personal email address running on a public email service such as
gmail.com,yahoo.com,hotmail.com, etc.
- If you use multiple email accounts, it is recommended that you use the account that you visit most frequently for signing up. This will ensure that you do not miss out on any important notifications and reminders sent to you from the platform.
B. Signing up
Please fill up the Sign-up Form and accept the platform usage terms and conditions. The following steps will help you fill up the Sign-up Form.
- Provide your email address and re-type it to confirm that you have provided the email address correctly.
- Choose a strong password and re-type it to confirm that you have provided it correctly. A visual cue is offered to help you understand the strength of the password you have entered. A strong password will keep your information secure and away from prying eyes. We strongly recommend that you use a password that is not used elsewhere. This will help ensure that if any other online service you use is compromised, your sign-in credentials for that service do not expose you elsewhere.
- Under Basic Information provide your first (given) and last (family) names, the name of the organization you currently work at, your job title (designation) at your current organization and the industry in which you work.
- Review the platform terms and conditions by clicking the link provided at the bottom of the page and then indicate your acceptance of the terms and conditions by ticking the box provided next to the link.
- Once you are satisfied with the information you have filled up and with the platform terms and conditions, submit the information.
C. Email confirmation
After you have submitted the information through the Sign-up Form, an email is sent to the email address provided by you. The purpose of this email is to ensure that you have access to an active email account so that you can enjoy uninterrupted participation in various activities. This email contains important instructions on verifying your access to the said email address. Please read the email carefully and follow the instructions to complete the sign-up process.
You can sign-in as soon as the sign-up process is complete. The sign-up confirmation page has a link that takes you to the Sign-in page.
D. Common problems
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You will be unable to submit the sign-up form in the following cases:
- You have left one or more form fields blank.
- You have not retyped the email address correctly.
- You have provided a password that is less than 8 characters long.
- You have not retyped the password correctly.
In all such cases, the form fields in error will be double-highlighted with a red background and an error message next to the field. Please review the form field carefully, correct any highlighted errors and then submit the form.
If the confirmation text typed does not match the text shown, the sign-up information will not be accepted and the sign-up form will load again with an error indicating that the confirmation text did not match. Please review the confirmation text carefully, type it in the appropriate form field and then re-submit the sign-up form.
It usually takes under 5 minutes for the sign-up confirmation email to be sent out. If you do not receive the confirmation email within this timeframe, please check the following:
- Check the email address provided carefully to ensure that it is correct. Sometimes
@gmail.comgets typed as@gamil.comor@gmial.com, making the email address invalid. If this is the case, please sign-up again with the correct email address. - Sign in to your email account to ensure that it is active. If your email account is not active, contact your email provider to activate the email account.
- Check that your email account has not run out of its storage quota. If this is the case, please clean up some of the emails from your account and then follow the instructions below for Forgot Password.
- Check your Junk or Spam folder to see if the confirmation email landed there (although this should be very rare). If it did, move the email to the Inbox and add the sender email address to your Contacts so that future emails are delivered correctly to the Inbox.
If you have forgotten your password, simply go to the Forgot Password page, provide the email address you provided at sign-up and submit a request to recover the password.
An email will be sent to the provided email address with instructions on recovering the password. Follow the instructions to recover the password and sign in again.
This error indicates that someone has already signed up with the specified email address. If you do not recall signing up yourself, simply use instructions for Forgot Password above to generate a new password for signing up.
Security note: Sign up completes only after a user has confirmed their email address by following the instructions included in the confirmation email sent to their email address. Further, users can sign in only after completing the sign up. This ensures that if someone (unknowingly, mistakenly or maliciously) attempts to sign up using an email address to which they do not have access, they will never be able to sign in because the sign up process, which depends on following steps outlined in the sign up confirmation emails, will never have been completed. Therefore, the aforementioned error will occur only if you share your email account with someone else and the other person(s) has (have) registered with that email address.
