Getting started

Huntly Faults Register is invite-only. There is no public sign-up page, and you cannot create your own account: an administrator inside the programme has to invite you. This keeps the issue register limited to people who are actually working on the corridor.

Setting up your account

An Admin or Super Admin sends an invitation to your email address. The email contains a single-use link.

Opening that link takes you to one screen. You give your first and last name, choose a password, and that is the whole of it — you are signed in immediately afterwards. There is nothing to install and no verification email to wait for.

Invitation links are valid for two days. If you open one after that it will not work; ask whoever invited you to send another, which takes them a few seconds. If the invitation went to a shared inbox, forward it promptly or ask for it to be reissued to the address you actually use.

If the email has not arrived after a few minutes, check your junk or quarantine folder, and ask your IT team whether mail from the Huntly Faults Register domain is being blocked.

Choosing a password

There are no rules about capital letters, digits or punctuation. Those rules mostly produce passwords like Password1!, which are easy for an attacker to guess and hard for a person to remember.

Instead, the form shows a strength meter as you type, and a password rated too weak is refused. The easiest way to get a strong rating is three or four unrelated words — nine lemon piano hedge is far stronger than P@ssw0rd, and much easier to recall.

Two things to avoid, because the meter will catch them: words connected to this programme (Huntly, Waikato, revocation, the register itself), and your own name, email address or organisation.

Two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication asks for a six-digit code from an app on your phone, in addition to your password. It means that someone who learns your password still cannot sign in as you.

• Admins and Super Admins must use it. If that is your role you will be asked to set it up when you first sign in. Have your phone to hand; it takes about a minute.
• Everyone else may use it, and is encouraged to. You will find it on your account page, and there is a reminder there until you turn it on. You can turn it off again later by confirming your password.

When you set it up you are given a set of recovery codes. Save them somewhere you can reach without your phone. They are shown once and only their hashes are stored, so they cannot be shown to you again. A password reset does not help here — the second factor is separate — so without a recovery code you would need an administrator to reset it for you.

Signing in

Use your email address and the password you chose. If you have two-factor authentication turned on you are then asked for the six-digit code.

Sign in on the same device you take photographs with if you upload from the field, since that saves transferring files.

Forgotten password

Use the Forgot password? link on the sign-in page. Huntly Faults Register emails you a link that is valid for two hours and can be used once.

Requesting a reset changes nothing on its own — your existing password keeps working until you follow the link and choose a new one — so it is safe to request one if you are unsure.

Setting a new password signs out every other device, which is deliberate: if someone else had your old password, this is what removes them.

If the reset email does not arrive, confirm you are using the address you were invited at. For the safety of everyone's accounts the screen says the same thing whether or not the address has an account, so a wrong address looks identical to a right one.

Your details

Your name is recorded when you set up your account, because it appears against your notes on issue timelines — an entry that reads as a real person is far more useful six months later than one that reads as an email prefix.

Two further details are optional and live on your account page, where you can add them whenever you like:

Your Organisation Type (Council, Consultant, Contractor or Other) and your Role are set by an administrator, not by you. You cannot change your own role, and your email address cannot be changed because it is how you sign in.

Getting your access changed

If you cannot do something you expect to be able to do — create an issue, edit a field, add a note — it is almost always your role rather than a fault. Read Roles and permissions, then ask an Admin in your organisation to change your role if the work genuinely requires it.