Section: Technology
IT tests self-serve password reset
Nov 19, 2008

Information Technology is instituting a new feature that will allow users to reset their own passwords.

Last Friday, Nov. 14, self-serve password reset was introduced in one of the student computer labs and by the end of next week’s fall break, all the student labs will be online with it.

“We’re shooting to have the feature available to all faculty, staff and students by early spring semester,” says Camille Fangue, IT operations manager of service and support.

According to Fangue, the ability for users to reset their password if they have forgotten it will be a tremendous time and cost saver.

“Now people have to either call the AskIT call center or go to one of our service centers when they forget their password,” Fangue says. “With this new feature, they’ll be able to reset their own password in about two minutes.”

Currently, IT deals with several thousand calls about passwords at the beginning of each semester. “About 80 percent of the calls the first week of classes are about passwords, so the first thing that it’s going to do for everybody is do away with the frustration,” Fangue says. “And the cost savings will be huge because we pay for each call to Presidium (IT’s service provider that handles frontline calls to the call center) to reset a password. This will free up our time and money so that we can provide better service in other needed areas.”

The first time that a user logs in after the reset feature is online, a screen will pop up that will ask the user to provide answers to five out of eight questions. Then if you later forget your password you can reset it by answering three of those five questions. If you answer incorrectly three times, the system will lock you out and you must contact a lab or service center technician.

“Another really cool thing will be down the road when we expand the feature to sync your passwords for other systems, like e-mail and MetroConnect,” Fangue adds.

IT Vice President Carl Powell says this is one of many enhancements users can expect from the College’s IT organization. “Earlier this year, we moved our IT Service Center from the Administration Building to the West Classroom, placing it in the heart of the campus and closer to our users. Now we are providing our users with the first step in self-service, allowing them to fix their own computer problems faster.”