Change a contact's email address

A contact has two addresses that usually match and occasionally drift apart:

• The Email field on their profile — where emails and portal invitations are delivered, and what the contact’s row shows in All Contacts.
• The Portal Username — the address they type to sign in to their portal, and the one shared login they use across every event and organization in Sessionboard.

Editing the Email field changes only the first. A contact whose address you update on the profile keeps signing in with the old one, and a login attempt with the new address fails because no account exists for it. When the change is meant to move their login too, do both.

Training video · 6:30The speaker's side: signing in, getting unstuck, finishing tasksThe invitation a speaker receives (Share Login Details, Get Link), the event's portal sign-in page and the Continue as chooser, what a speaker sees on Home, Tasks, Profile and Files, the two sign-in calls (You do not have access to the portal for this event, and the locked account after five wrong passwords) with the speaker's fix and the admin's Unlock account on Event Team, Change Portal Username and Reset Password from the contact's Details card, the Assigned Portal column and the three checks when a task is invisible, Due Date and Extended Due Date in Edit Settings, filtering a task to Incomplete and writing to just those people, and View portal as.

1. 0:02The invitation
2. 0:39The sign-in page
3. 1:35What the speaker sees
4. 2:42I can't sign in
5. 3:13The locked account
6. 4:03A changed email address
7. 4:31The right portal
8. 5:06Due dates and extensions
9. 5:42Who hasn't finished
10. 6:07See it as they do

Change the email on the profile

Open the contact’s profile (Edit at the left of their row), click the Email value in the Profile section, type the new address and click Save Changes. A confirmation — Update this contact’s email address? — reminds you that this is the communication email only; click Update Email. Emails from now on go to the new address.

Change the portal username

1. In the same profile, scroll to the Details card at the bottom of the Profile tab. Portal Username shows the address they currently sign in with — a dash means they have never been given portal access.

2. Click Portal options and choose Change Portal Username.

   

3. Enter the address in New Username and click Update.

   

The contact signs in with the new address immediately, with the same password. Their sessions, tasks and submissions are unchanged — the login moved, not the record.

Caution

A username must be unique across Sessionboard. If the new address already belongs to another login, the dialog says so; in that case the two records are probably the same person and should be merged rather than renamed.

Note

Reset Password, in the same menu, emails the contact a password-reset link. It is the fastest answer to “I can’t get into my portal” once the username is right.