Sign-in email address

You need to use an email address as your username when signing in. You can no longer use customized usernames, such as John Doe or jdoe.

This measure ensures unique user identities within the platform and provides you with the following benefits:

  1. Enhanced user experience no more forgotten username; if you know your email address, you know your sign-in credentials.

  2. Easier password resets no need to contact admins or Support to reset passwords. You can reset them yourself using the Forgot your Password? option on the sign-in screen.

  3. Enhanced security sign-in emails are the new standard in security practice and have proven to be more resistant to security threats.

This process does not have any effect on accessing sites or content. You can access your accounts and materials as before. The only change is during the sign-in process: instead of a username, you must enter your email address.

If you have different username and password combinations for multiple sites, you can continue to maintain distinct accounts. You must designate a different email address as your sign-in email for each distinct account.

If you have a common username and password for all your sites, but your notifications go to different email addresses, depending on which company they are for, you can choose how to configure your setup.

If you don't want to use separate emails for identification and notification, then you can keep the same address for both purposes. If you want to use a separate sign-in email and notification email, for example to keep notifications inside the company email domain, then it's recommended to register a board email (also known as a contact email) accordingly. For more information about email types, go to The different email types.

User notifications

There are two types of user notifications:

  • Security notifications Informs you about events that impact your account, such as your password expiring, or your account being locked. Security notification emails are sent to your account email on file. Notification emails about the self-service recovery processes are also sent to your account email. These emails deliver verification codes or recover site names and sign-in emails.

  • Content notifications Updates you about changes to the materials within your sites, including new book content, approvals, or questionnaires. Content notification emails are sent to your board email (also known as contact email) on file.

Checking user sign-in details

If you want to check whether your users should be logging in with their name and surname or their email, as a Contacts admin you can export a list of users to view what username they should enter when logging in. You can also see whether a user has yet to update their username to an email address.

For more information about exporting a list of users, go to Exporting a list of users.

After you download an Excel file listing your users, you can view their usernames in the Login details column.

Potential email address error cases

If the selected email conflicts with the configured SSO settings for your site (or other sites in the same data center), it cannot be used. This is to prevent SSO user creation and an error message is displayed.

If the email you select is already designated as a sign-in email in the system, an error message is displayed to advise you against using that email. Sign-in emails must be unique across all data centers.

Directors

Directors can select an existing email address that is already registered to use as their sign-in email.

Directors can temporarily skip the email promotion screens to access their boards materials. If directors need to sign in multiple times, they can skip the email username update step as many times as they want within a 24-hour period. After the first 24-hour time period, directors have two more similar opportunities to skip the email promotion screens before it becomes mandatory.

As a Boards administrator, you can use the following messaging template to communicate with your board members or executives: Sign-in email address template