The User Email field serves no purpose in MinistryPlatform. However, if you manually create a User record, you must enter something in the User Email field.

If you create a User account on the Portal, the system completes the User Email field with the email address provided for the Contact email address when you created the User account. Once you create the User account, any future email address updates you make on the Portal's My User Account page only update the Contact record's Email Address field, not the User record's User Email field. So, it's up to you where to keep the User Email field reconciled with the Contact record's Email Address field and how you use the User-related Pages and Views.

A nightly data quality routine looks for this scenario. When it finds one, the Contact record duplicates, the system creates the additional User record associated with the new record, and a "Duplicate of" relationship ties both records together. You can then use the Combine Contacts Tool. On the Contact page, select the Contact with two User records, launch the Combine Contacts Tool, and complete the merging process.

Although requirements for passwords vary by customer, here are some tips for good practices for any password.

Avoid passwords that include:

• Personal information (account number, phone number, and so on),
• The name or birth date of a family member,
• The name of a pet, and
• A single word.

Strive for passwords that include:

• A combination of letters, numbers, and special characters,
• A combination of cases (upper and lower case),
• A multi-word phrase, and
• A phrase abbreviated using numbers and special characters.

We recommend you start with basic, read-only roles for those who first need access to the Platform. From there, you can work with their supervisors to determine what tasks they perform within MinistryPlatform and assign roles accordingly. It is important to start out with a fundamental understanding from their supervisor of:

If you have a "Basic Ministry Volunteer" role that is generic and useful, then you can put any volunteer into this role for most things volunteers across all ministries might do. Then, you could have very specific roles for things you wouldn't want volunteers to do without making an exception (for example, Mission Trip Reports).

The system is designed to grant access to the Setup Area - all or nothing. This is granted to Users, not Roles. To grant access, in the User record, set the Setup Admin bit field to either Yes or No. The rationale is that if you trust anyone with access to some of it, you should trust them with access to all of it.

These are identities Users have set up for External Login Authentication.

If it is a Global Filter: Go to the User record and remove the Congregation from the Global Filter sub-page.

If it is a User Congregation ("Congregation Allowed"): Go to System Setup > User Congregations, find the appropriate User and Congregation combination, and edit.

The User needs permission for the page. If this happens when you edit a Series, you need to grant the Assign permission for the page. See Page Permissions.

To see the password requirements, log in to MinistryPlatform, click your user icon in the top-right corner, and go to your user profile. Click Change/Edit Password, and click inside the New Password field. A box displays with the password requirements for your system. A SPoC can contact Support to request to update the password requirements.

When certain processes create User accounts, the system adds the Contact ID to the end of the username.

You should remove their Security Roles from the User Security Roles page.

When creating a User account, the system displays an error if there is another contact with the same email address. Although not best practice, you can create the account manually. User accounts that use the same email address presents an issue with resetting passwords, and therefore we don't recommend it as a best practice.