Manual Authentication

In this article:

• Overview
• Adding your students to the DCS
  • Adding and managing students individually
  • Using Bulk update to manage students
    • Adding new students in bulk
    • Updating existing students in bulk
• First-time authentication for Students

Overview

HEIs that do not use Shibboleth, OpenAthens or EZProzy can use a manual authentication method to give their students access to DCS links. This is particularly useful for smaller institutions who do not have a federated system, but who want to use the DCS. 

This authentication method will authenticate your students based on their email addresses, which you will be able to add to the DCS in bulk. 

To enable this method, HEIs will need to:

• complete onboarding with the DCS 
• ask the CLA support team to set the HEI's authentication method to 'manual'
• upload all required student emails to the DCS (see below)

Students will then be able to access any live links. Please note:

• They will need to set up their password (see below for a step-to-step guide) 
• Each session lasts 12 hours, so the students will not have to continuously re-login
• We recommend students enable cookies so their login details will be saved in their browser. 

Should you wish your lecturers to have access to the student links as well, you can give them 'student' permissions. This means you could either upload their emails to the Student users page in bulk or go into individual lecturer's user page and tick to add the 'student' role to their profile.

Adding your students to the DCS

Adding and managing students individually

To add your student emails, you should go to the 'Users’ page of the DCS and select the 'Students' tab. From here you can click ‘Add new’ at the top right of the screen. 
 

Make sure you select (only) 'Student' as the user type. All fields except for the email will then be greyed out.
 
 You can also archive or delete users through the three dot menu on the right of each student row.

Using Bulk update to manage students

DCS Admin users can bulk update students. We recommend that you bulk update your student cohort once a year and use the above manual method to add single students whenever necessary. The bulk update function can be used to delete as well as add email addresses. 

To bulk update your students, you can either:

• download a blank template to which you can add all of your required student emails, or 
• generate a CSV pre-filled with current information - this is useful when you want to add or remove students from the DCS

There is more detail on both of these processes below. 

Once you have prepared your data, save your template (as a CSV file) and click 'Bulk Update'. 

Adding new students in bulk

To bulk add students, ensure you are on the 'Students' tab in the 'Users' section of the DCS.
Click 'Download template' and add all your required emails: 

Updating existing students in bulk

To bulk update your students, ensure you are on the 'Students' tab in the 'Users' section of the DCS
Click More Actions and select ‘Download Current Data from the drop-down menu.’ 

You will then be able to view all your current student data, and add or amend as required. 

• To add a user, add the student's email address and the status 'Active'
• To delete a user, change the Status to 'Delete'
• To archive a user, change the Status to 'Inactive'

When you are ready, save your CSV, click 'bulk update' and upload the file. 

You will see the status of your user update in the table below, moving through 'Queuing' 'In progress' and 'Completed' (or 'Completed with errors', or 'Failed'). 

 

 

If a student is deleted by mistake, please add them again and they should be able to log straight back in using their original password. 

First-time authentication for Students

Student users are only prompted to authenticate when clicking a DCS content link.

When student clicks a DCS link for the first time: 

1. They select New user on the login screen. 
2. They enter their email address (which must already be added to the DCS). 
3. An email is sent to them with a link to set a password. 
4. They follow the link, create a password, and sign in.

Once signed in, the student is taken directly to the link they originally clicked, without needing to return to their reading list or VLE. 

Students remain authenticated for up to 12 hours and can access other DCS links during that time without logging in again, provided they stay in the same browser session. 
 

First-time users will see this screen when clicking on a DCS link:

Then they will be sent the following email and asked to follow the instructions to set up a password.