Hi Jennifer,
When you load your student records, you can certainly load in anything
you want into the password field. It is usually helpful to load in
something that is unique to the student like their birth date or
university ID. You could load in the same password for everyone, but
that would lead to students knowing how to access other students accounts.
If you register patrons by hand, then you can change the random password
to something else. It's a few extra keystrokes, but will get you by
until records are loaded for you.
When we migrated our data, we loaded the same password into each record.
It was a random string of 25 characters and we never told anyone what
the password was. As long as the patron has a valid email address in
their Evergreen record, then they can reset their password from the
login screen. People who did not have an email address just had to ask
the circulation staff to reset the password for them.
For public libraries who don't load patron records, we had business
cards printed up with 4-digit numbers on them. When registering a
patron, libraries input the number on the next card and hand the card to
the patron. That way they don't have to say out loud what the password
is. The patron can then go change it to something else.
--
Martha Driscoll
Systems Manager
North of Boston Library Exchange
Danvers, Massachusetts
www.noblenet.org
On 2/4/2015 4:00 PM, Walz, Jennifer wrote:
Kathy,
That is what I believe is happening now when you register a new user.
But that is a random number. But the instructions on the web page
say use your phone number. That is incorrect. And what I really want
to know, is instead of generating a random number for each newly
registered user, is there a way to auto populate the field with the SAME
standard generic password. That way, when we personally register a new
student, we can tell them “this is your generic password” so they can
then go on the system to change it themselves. We would of course NOT
post those instructions on the web site or opac. We also hope to be
auto-loading our student records sometime soon. So in that process, can
we fill in the SAME starter password for each new user record when the
system uploads all of their other data? Does the system automatically
generate a random password whenever a new record is created? Can we
have it copy their barcode over to that field?
Thanks!
Jennifer
--------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Walz, MLS – ILS Mysterium
Kinlaw Library - *Asbury University*
One Macklem Drive, Wilmore, KY 40390
859-858-3511 ext. 2269
[email protected]
*From:*Open-ils-general
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf
Of *Kathy Lussier
*Sent:* Tuesday, February 03, 2015 5:14 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] user passwords for accounts - default?
Hi Jennifer,
Another possible approach is to use a randomly-generated password when
creating the account and then instructing users to use the "Create or
reset your password" link on the "My Account" page to reset their
password on the first login. The advantage to this method is users can
then create their own passwords, which is a bit more secure than using a
phone number or another number that might be easily obtained.
Kathy
On 02/03/2015 11:17 AM, Walz, Jennifer wrote:
All –
Ok. I do appreciate that Evergreen has built in security
measures. They are very good. However, I am unclear about how we
can change some of those settings to better match our needs.
It appears to me that the default for user accounts passwords is
the last 4 digits of the patron phone number. But we don’t enter a
phone number most of the time. We use email as the required field
instead. Phone number is not required on the patron registration
form. So, then how do patrons know what their password is in order
to access their account through the opac interface? Is there a
way that we can set a default generic password to be populated into
the patron registration form? We had that on our previous system
and we could then tell all students to use that and then change
their password after they got into their account. How do we make
this work in Evergreen? How do students get into their account if
they don’t know what the password is?
Secondary issue: And I am assuming that somewhere in the templates
we can change the language of the prompt for the opac webpage?
Right now it tells patrons to use the last 4 digits of their
phone number – which is wrong information. Can someone tell me where
that text is so I can change it?
Thanks!
Jennifer
--------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Walz, MLS - Head of ILS madness
Kinlaw Library - *Asbury University*
One Macklem Drive, Wilmore, KY 40390
859-858-3511 ext. 2269
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
--
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
Twitter:http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
