If you or a colleague is having trouble logging in to PICSWebPICS, there are a couple of reasons that this could be:

1. They don’t have an account in PICS at all

2. They have an account in PICS but they are using the wrong username

3. They have an account in PICS but their password is wrong

Try this first

In all cases, the best thing to try first is the forgot password process in PICSWebPICS.

• Go to the PICSWeb PICS login page

• Click “Forgot your password?”

• Enter your email address and click submit

• You will be shown a message telling you to check your email. Note: For security reasons, we can not say "User Not Found", so you will always see this same message, even if we didn't find your user account.

• Check your email. If we found your user account, you will have an email from PICSWeb PICS with a link to Reset Password. Click this link and follow the prompts to set your new password and then log in to PICSWebPICS.

If you did not receive an email, you will need to move on to the following steps, which will need the help of a colleague who has Database Administrator permissions for PICSWebPICS.

If you did get an email, but even after following the process you can still not log in, then you should refer to the process below for using the wrong username.

Note: The following processes can only be done by a user with the Database Administrator permission.

When the person doesn't have a user account for

...

PICS at all

In the Users and Permissions section, search for the user who can't log in and if you can’t find them, then they don’t have a user account.

...

When you create a user in PICSWeb PICS we will use their email address as their username too.

...

You will then need to set up their PICSWeb PICS permissions.

When the person has a user account in PICS but they are using the wrong username

You find the user in PICSWebPICS, you can check what their username is in PICS. Many users in PICS databases on hosting will have their PICS Username set to their hosting username. But many also will not.

In PICSWebPICS, open the user’s summary screen and on the left-hand details section you will see what their PICS Username is:

...

Confirm that this is the username that the user is attempting to log in with.

They have an account in PICS but their password is wrong

If the username that the user is using is correct then it is their password that is wrong. They are probably trying to use their Hosting Password, but this will not always work in PICSWeb PICS (see below about setting hosting password into PICS password).

The user will need to perform a Forgot Password process as described in Try this First above. If they didn’t receive an email, then a user with database administrator permissions in PICSWeb PICS can check their user profile to see what their Email address is in their PICS record. If the email is blank, it will look like this in PICSWebPICS:

...

In this case, the database administrator user should edit the record and enter the user's email address. After doing this, the user can try to perform Forgot Password again and it should work.

Setting Hosting Password into PICS Password

PICS passwords will sometimes, but not always, be the same as the hosting password.

...

Because of this, users who log in to both PICSWeb PICS and PICSDesktop could get themselves into a mix up if they change their PICSWeb PICS password to something different than the password they use for hosting portal.

We would recommend that if the user is using PICS desktop and PICSWeb PICS that they set their PICS password to the same password that they use for the hosting portal when they perform the forgot password process in PICSWebPICS.