Public user registration and account management

Your agency may want to require public users to register for and/or associate a license with a public user account before accessing information in Citizen Access. This feature allows the implementation of restrictions to information, provides a way to validate the communication channel with public users, assists in the management task permissions, and can control exposure to personal information. This section provides questions that help guide your thoughts in how you want to configure registration and account management for your agency. Then, it has a comprehensive list of configurations to help you implement registration and account management.

Decide how to implement registration and account management

Before implementing the registration and account management for your public users, review the list of decision making design considerations to ensure you configure Citizen Access to meet the requirements for your agency.

  • Do you want to allow public users to register in your Agency’s ACA website, and whether register by an external system, or Facebook? See Understand the registration process.
  • Do you want agency employees to activate new public user accounts? See “Activating a Public User Account” in the “Public Users” section in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.
  • Do you want public users to activate their own account through email verification? See Define activation emails.
  • Who in your agency manage public user accounts? For tasks associated with managing accounts the “Public Users” chapter in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.
  • Do you want to allow public users to maintain their own contacts, and enable the public user to timely update their contact information in their account management page? See Account settings.
  • How does your agency manage licenses relating to public user accounts? See Define expired license and insurance settings.
  • Does your agency want to require agency activation for linking a license? If so, see “Managing Associated Licenses” in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.
  • Do you want to allow public users to register without a professional license and have the ability to create applications? For example, a non‑licensed homeowner can apply for a permit for an accessory structure or home repair. If so, this is the default configuration.
  • Do you want to allow public users to link a professional license to their account at the time of registration? Do you want to filter the available application types based on the license type? For example, you can allow all licensed plumbers to create only plumbing related applications while licensed electricians can only create electrical related applications. See Registration settings page.

Configure required registration and account management settings

This section provides a comprehensive list of required configuration steps to get your Citizen Access website up and running with registration and account management. These steps provide all configurations of the registration and account management processes, including configuration tasks in Civic Platform and Citizen Access setup. It is recommended best practice to implement the registration process using this checklist together with Registration and account management.

To configure required registration settings

  1. Configure the standard choice LICENSED PROFESSIONAL TYPE.

    Define the LICENSED PROFESSIONAL TYPE standard choice and list contractor types as the Standard choice values. This configuration allows registered public users to associate a license with their account. Contractor types include: electrical, mechanical, gas, plumbing, and/or general.

    For information on configuring the standard choices, refer to the Accela Civic Platform Configuration Reference. See also, “Managing Professionals” in the People chapter of the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.

  2. Configure the standard choices for contacts.

    The CONTACT TYPE standard choice determines the contact types that public users can select when adding contact information to their accounts, and when adding contacts to their applications.

    When public users register for an account, they may only enter part of the contact information. You can configure the INDIVIDUAL_CONTACT_MATCH_CRITERIA and ORGANIZATION_CONTACT_MATCH_CRITERIA standard choices to pull the rest of contact information from a close match contact which already exists in the Civic Platform reference database.

    For information on configuring the standard choices, refer to the Accela Civic Platform Configuration Reference.

  3. Enable Registration and Login links on the Welcome global page

    Feature settings page check box configuration that enables the Registration and Login links on the Welcome global page. See Feature setting configurations.

  4. Define the license registration functionality

    Registration settings page configurations determine if you want to require the association of a license with a public user account, disable Add license buttons, and disable Remove license button. For configuration information, see Register license

  5. Define the EMSE script for defining which license types have auto-issuance and associate to the RegistrationSubmitAfter event. See Submit registration after scripting information.

  6. Define the EMSE scripts for contact validation based on SSN and FEIN. See Set SSN and FEIN contact field validation.

  7. Customize the related email notifications in Civic Platform > Administration > Setup > Communication manager > Notification templates.

    • Password reset

    • Citizen user registration

    • Deactivate account

    • Validate citizen user (sent to agency to activate an account)

    • Account verification (sent to public user with an activation link)

    • Associate license to account (notice to Citizen Access user)

    • Associate license to account (internal notice)

    Refer to the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide for complete details on customizing notification templates.

  8. Enable account management functionality to allow public users to modify account details. See Enable account management functionality.

  9. Define password functionality to define how ACA notifies public users of a forgotten password. See Public user passwords.

  10. Customize the web pages related to registration. See Customize registration and account management web pages.

  11. Define expiration settings to purge inactive accounts from your database. This configuration includes a script and batch job configuration. See Expiration interval settings.

  12. Manage public user accounts

    A registered public user has an account to access and view information in Citizen Access. Administrators manage the public user accounts in Civic Platform public user portlets, by deactivating public user account, regenerating passwords, and updating information. For more information on how to maintain public user records and configuration details surrounding the Public user portlet, refer to the “Public Users” section in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.