User accounts

This section introduces you to the various types of Citizen Access users who go online to work with your government agency. This section also identifies the configurations to retrieve a forgotten password, log in to the site, and designate a public user as a delegate.

After public users log in to Citizen Access, they can make updates to their account management details by modifying their personal information, grouping the records associated with their account in a collection, or designating another public user to be their delegates. You must customize the associated web pages for these tasks.

Some user types, such as licensed professionals and agency employees, have user-specific configurations that you can apply. Use Citizen Access architecture and interface for directions on how to get to the various areas of Citizen Access Setup so you can perform configurations.

The best practice to use this chapter with the other chapters of implementation as described in Implementation so your website reflects the agency services you want to display in Citizen Access.

User types

This section provides a description for user types so you know for whom you are configuring features and functionality. User types include anonymous users, public users, registered users, licensed professionals, contacts, owners, record creators, and agency employees.

User name	User decription
Public users	Public users are any persons that visit your Citizen Access website. They include anonymous public users and registered public users, all licensed professional types, owners, contacts, and agency employees. Registered public users have a Public User account in Civic Platform that they or someone at the agency can manage online.
Anonymous users	Anonymous users are people that visit the website, but do not have a registered account, or do not log in to their account to perform a task. For example, an anonymous user may want to get a fee estimate for a business license so he can prepare for the impending expenses associated with that process.
Registered users	A registered user is any person that has a public user account in Citizen Access. This person has gone through the registration process and has username and login information. This person may be registered licensed professionals, contacts, owners, and record creators that can login to Citizen Access and perform a task.
Licensed professionals	Professionals are contractors, architects, engineers, and developers (CAED) who have received licenses. Professionals can also be business owners, beauticians, pharmacists, doctors, nurses, and so forth. Anyone that requires a license to provide a service or to do something is a licensed professional.
Contacts	A contact can be any person that relates to an application or a parcel. For example, it may be the accountant responsible for paying the fees associated with the numerous building permits for a developer. It can be a contact at an attorney’s office for a property owner.
Owners	The person or people who own the related property or parcel. You can relate this person to public user accounts so they have access to an application process. For example, a contractor can share permitting information online by associating the owner with the permit application in Citizen Access.
Record creator	The person associated with the completion and submittal of an application. This person may be different than the owner or licensed professional. For example, an administrative assistant may have created a business license renewal record for an architect.
Agency employee	Someone that works at the agency and performs tasks to assist in moving an application through the workflow. They may also have relevant tasks to verifying information submitted through Citizen Access. For example, they may have to approve a license associated with a public user account. Agency employees perform their tasks in Civic Platform.
Authorized agent	Someone who can manage agent clerks and sell authorized licenses to citizens. An example of the license is fishing and hunting license.
Authorized agent clerk	Someone that an authorized agent creates for selling authorized service licenses to citizens on behalf of the authorized agent.

Registration options

Your agency may want to require public users to register before accessing information in Citizen Access. There are several ways for a user to become registered in the Citizen Access website.

Option	Option description
Registration in Civic Platform	As administrators, you can add new public user accounts for Citizen Access directly in the Public User administration portlet in Civic Platform. For more information, see the “Public Users” section in the Accela Civic Platform Administrator Guide.
Registration in Citizen Access	Citizen Access offers a registration process to collect user account information. For information on implementing the registration process in your Citizen Access website, see Registration and account management.
Registration from external system	Citizen Access allows public users to log in using an external user account with LDAP authentication or the single sign-on feature. When an external user, for the first time, accesses a Citizen Access page that is accessible to only registered users, Citizen Access creates a new public user account for him and a reference contact for the new account based on the contact information from the external user account. The new Citizen Access user account then has association with the external user account in the later-on Citizen Access page access. Note: Different from normal account registration, Citizen Access does not look for close matches in the reference contacts based on the contact information from the external user account. In the Account management page, an Update action option is available for the reference contact created with the external account information. If a public user clicks the Update, the standard contact fields in the reference contact synchronizes with the contact information in the external account.
Register licensed professional accounts by EMSE	If your agency uses Citizen Access, you can configure the EMSE script REFLICPROFADDAFTER EMSE to create a public user account associated with the new referenced licensed professional with a completed email field on an application. After the intake process, EMSE initiates the public user account registration process in Citizen Access for the referenced professional associated with the email address and sends a validation email. After agency receives the validation, Civic Platform sends the registration confirmation email to the referenced professional. Only an Accela Implementation specialist or a system administrator who has received training from an Accela Implementation specialist or a Product Manager should write and implement this sample script. Improperly written scripts can seriously damage your system by incorrectly altering or deleting data for many records. For information on writing and implementing scripts, refer to the Accela Civic Platform Scripting Guide.