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20.1 Registration

20.1.1 What is registration?
20.1.2 Registering with Business Collaborator
20.1.3 Choosing a user name
20.1.4 Choosing a password
20.1.5 Setting and changing your password
20.1.6 Changing or adding email addresses


20.1.1 What is registration?

Before starting to use Business Collaborator, you have to register as a user of the Business Collaborator server. You need only register with the server once. After that, you simply need to log in to start using Business Collaborator. The Business Collaborator server recognises a registered user as a combination of their

  • user name
  • password
  • personal email address.

Once you have registered with the server, you will be able to log in wherever you are, from any machine with an Internet connection.

Note 1
Business Collaborator will periodically attempt to send email messages to users - e.g. on successful registration or sending email notification of events (see Section 12 - Event notification). Therefore, it is best if each user of the system has a valid email address. However, users may still benefit from using the remainder of Business Collaborator’s features if they do not have a valid email address.
Note 2
If you use several Business Collaborator servers, you must register with each one separately.


20.1.2 Registering with Business Collaborator

New users can either be registered by a server administrator or register themselves. A Business Collaborator server may -- or may not -- allow self-registration by prospective users. If a server has not been configured for self-registration, then only the Business Collaborator administrator(s) can register new users.

The following description of the registration process assumes that the Business Collaborator server does allow self-registration.
The key to registration is a personal email address. This email address must be unique. A Business Collaborator server usually obtains this from somebody who is already a registered user and who invites the prospective user to cooperate with him/her in a shared folder. (Alternatively, a link for registering with the server may be provided on a publicly accessible page.)

When the registration procedure is initiated by specifying the prospective user’s email address, Business Collaborator sends an email to that specified address. (Note that users who do not have access to email can therefore only be registered by the system administrator and must have a "dummy" email address assigned to them.) The email message which Business Collaborator sends to the prospective user contains a special URL which should be opened in their Web browser.

Opening this URL (which can be used only once!) brings up a form to fill in the user name and initial password they wish to use.

Note
Recommendations for user name and password conventions are given in section 20.1.3.

When the form is submitted, Business Collaborator combines the information in the form with the email address, registers a user with the given user name and is ready for their first log-in using the user name and password specified.


20.1.3 Choosing a user name

The user name serves as the user’s identification for the Business Collaborator server. It is therefore important that the user name chosen (or assigned by the server administrator) is one which will clearly and uniquely identify this user to other people using the server. In particular, users of the Business Collaborator server will often belong to different organisations and so sufficient information must be provided for their identity to be clear. We suggest that you use first initial followed by last name or firstname.lastname as the standard user name convention (e.g. gperkins or graham.perkins).
This will enable other users of the Business Collaborator server to find the person they are looking for easily and to identify them successfully -- and this is exactly the purpose of having a user name. (In addition, of course, users may associate additional details with their user name, such as the name of their organisation or their work phone number - see section 5.6. This will be particularly useful on servers with many users from different organisations and for users with commonly occurring names.)

The Business Collaborator server requires user names to be unique. If your user name is already being used as a user name on the server, Business Collaborator will report an error in the registration procedure.

Note 1
Your user name should not contain spaces.
Note 2
In Business Collaborator, you cannot change your own user name although you can change your other details including your password and the email addresses associated with your user name - see section 5.6. If you do wish to change your user name for some reason, ask your system administrator.


20.1.4 Choosing a password

You have control over the password which is associated with your Business Collaborator user name and the system will not force you to change it. You should therefore choose a password known only to yourself and not write it down anywhere.

To protect the information on the Business Collaborator server accessible by you, you should choose a secure password and change it regularly. (Your user name -- the other part of the key to the information in your workspaces -- is easy to find out.)

Your password should

  • not be the same as, or part of, your user name
  • not be a word from the dictionary
  • not be a word obviously associated with you such as your nickname
  • not be told to anyone else
  • not be the same password you use for every password-protected application
  • contain a combination of numbers and letters
  • contain a combination of upper and lower case letters

Depending on the configuration of your Business Collaborator server, your password may be sent over the Internet unencrypted.


20.1.5 Setting and changing your password

If you register yourself with the server (section 20.1.2), you will choose your initial password at registration. Alternatively, if you were registered by the system administrator, an initial password will have been assigned for you.

Thereafter, you can change your password whenever you wish to do so. You should change it regularly for the sake of security of the shared folders and workspaces you are a member of. Click  User  |  Change Pwd  to bring up a form which lets you specify your new password.

If you have forgotten your password, you cannot access your Business Collaborator folders and workspaces any more -- and, of course, you cannot change your password in the normal way. For this emergency case, Business Collaborator provides a specific procedure to assign a new password without having to provide the old one:

  • Check the front (or log in) page of your Business Collaborator server for a button or link marked "Forgotten your password?". Click on this and enter your email address which is already associated with your user name. Business Collaborator will send an email to that address, thus ensuring that only you can change your password. This email contains the URL of a form that allows you to change the password for your user name without having to provide the old password. (If no "Forgotten your password?" option is displayed or you do not have access to email, contact your system administrator.)


20.1.6 Changing or adding email addresses

Every Business Collaborator user must have at least one email address associated with their name. If you have several email addresses, you should associate them all with your user name. This is described in section 5.6.3.

You should follow the same procedure if you are given a new email address.
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