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I have attempted to log in, but have not received my authentication email. What do I do?

There are different reasons why you might not have received an authentication email:

  • You might not be a user in Online Surveys v3.
  • You might have attempted to authenticate with the wrong email address.
  • There might be a delay caused at the recipient’s end.
  • The email is going to your junk / spam folder.

I'm not sure if I am a registered user

In order to access Online Surveys, you will need to be invited to register by your organisation’s administrator.

If you have never logged in and have never made this request, then it is likely you do not have a user account yet. In this instance, you should contact your admin. Often, at universities, this will be your IT service desk or Library. You should check your organisation’s intranet for information. If you are unable to find who your admin is, you can contact help@jisc.ac.uk and we will help you.

If you were a user in Online Surveys v2 prior to September 2023, then your user account will have been automatically created in Online Surveys v3 when it launched. So it is likely, in this instance, that you will have a user account in Online Surveys v3.

I know I am a registered user, but I still do not receive an authentication email

The most likely reason for this is that you are attempting to log in with the wrong email address. Often, organisations provide different variations for email addresses (particularly universities). For example you may be able to use studentid@uni.ac.uk or first_name.surname@uni.ac.uk for the same email account.

You should check that you are attempting to log in with the right format / alias. You will need to use the email address that your admin has set you up with.

You can check your registration email to understand what your registered email is. From 06/03/2024, your registered email address will be displayed in the content of your registration email. If you received your registration email prior to this you can, in some email clients, check the “To” field in the email. If you are still unsure, you can check with your admin (whoever it was you made the request of to register).

I know I am a registered user and I know I am using the correct email address, but I still do not receive an authentication email

If you are registered and you are certain that you are using the correct email address, then there shouldn’t be any problems. 

Authentication emails are issued instantly and, in the vast majority of cases, will arrive within a few seconds.

Sometimes, depending on the settings at your organisation’s end, email may be filtered and external email may take a little longer to come through.

Emails can bounce for various reasons too. In cases where the email eventually comes through after a long period, this might suggest that the email has initially bounced and gone through a series of reattempts. It may reflect a temporary or ongoing issue with your organisation receiving external email due to capacity or other reasons. In this instance, it may be worth flagging with your IT team. If the problem persists, then let us know at help@jisc.ac.uk and we can investigate.

My authentication emails are going into my spam / junk folder

Jisc regularly reviews its reputation and deliverability scores to ensure we do everything we can to ensure email is successfully delivered, but there still might be some cases where authentication emails are delivered into spam or junk folders. 

If this is the case, you can follow the instructions for your email application to mark us as a safe sender to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Why does Online Surveys v3 use authentication emails and not username and password to log in?

Online Surveys uses passwordless login, which means we store no passwords and authenticate users via email. This brings the following benefits:

  • A more secure method of logging in (prevents password sharing and brute-force attempts at logging in by hackers).
  • Ensures that, if a user leaves an organisation, they will be unable to access their account in the event that it is not promptly removed.
  • Ensures that organisations can meet Cyber Essentials requirements (by applying muti-factor authentication to their email client).