The purpose of this page is to provide colleges and districts with general use information about the new OpenCCC Account Creation admin tool available to authorized staff via the CCC Administrator.

Introduction

Although approximately 80% of CCC students currently have a CCCID, students who enroll outside of the online systemwide application (i.e., CCCApply) likely will not have a CCCID in their local college’s Student Information System (SIS). The OpenCCC Account Creation admin tool allows colleges to generate user accounts and CCCIDs for those students who are either unable to access computer devices and email or existing students who have bypassed the current online systemwide application process for various reasons.

Without the universal implementation of CCCID, key information about students can be obscured, which in turn undermines the system’s ability to serve their needs.

Contents

1 Introduction
2 About the Account Creation Tool
3 College Preparation & Recommendations
4 User Guide
5 Account Creation Workflows

Use Cases

User Type	Purpose	Who benefits from this…

User Type

Purpose

Who benefits from this…

Special Populations
(e.g., Incarcerated Students, etc.)

To create an OpenCCC student account & submit an admission application on behalf of a special population student* who is unable to access systemwide technologies themselves

These include:
- Incarcerated, nursing home, and other similar student populations who do not have access to computer devices or the internet
- Noncredit students who may enroll outside of the online CCCApply Noncredit Application (i.e., noncredit paper application)
- Instructional Service Agreement (ISA) students who enroll directly into an SIS

Students Without a CCCID (current or previous CCC students with a valid email address but no CCCID)

For Creating Account(s) for Existing Students without a CCCID

Support current students in your SIS without CCCIDs, or backfill previous students with CCCIDs for reporting purposes.

Legacy or existing CCC students who may have enrolled outside of or prior to the college’s implementation of the systemwide online admission application (missing CCCIDs).

It is important to develop business and security workflow processes for collecting, handling, and storing student personal data when implementing the Account Creation Tool. Recommendations for some of these processes are provided in the College Preparation & Recommendations section below.

To learn more about the Account Creation tool, please contact your Enabling Services College Experience Manager (CEM) at cems@ccctechcenter.org.

About the Account Creation Tool

The OpenCCC Account Creation tool, located in the CCC Administrator tool, allows authorized staff to create OpenCCC student accounts (CCCIDs) using the same role-based authorized access in place for CCCApply Administrator.

How It Works

With both the Single Account Creation and the Multi-Account Creation process, a temporary email address will be used for the student (which is also the username). The institution must create this email account before creating the OpenCCC account(s). Once the account is created, the student can take ownership of the account using the temporary credentials.

Taking Ownership of the Student Account

For a student to claim ownership of an account, MUST follow these steps to reclaim the account:

1. Sign in to either CCCApply or OpenCCC using their temporary email and password.

2. Update their email address in their Account Profile.

3. Complete the password reset/verification process using their updated information.

Flowchart showing how a college creates a temporary email to create an OpenCCC account and then sends to the student to sign in.

Password Reset Process

For more detailed steps on how students can take ownership of their OpenCCC account, see OpenCCC Account Creation Tool | Claiming Ownership of a OpenCCC Account.

Single Account Creation

The single account creation process allows authorized staff to create a single OpenCCC account on behalf of a student who may not have access to systemwide technology applications, such as an incarcerated student. Many institutions are creating accounts for this population with the intention of also submitting an admission application for the student.

When an account is created using the single account creation process, several system defaults and flags are set that support staff through these activities and remove certain security blocks designed to prevent fraud. Staff should be aware of the triggers in place when determining which account creation process they choose to use.

Multi-Account Creation

The multi account creation process allows staff to upload a list of student account data information via a configurable spreadsheet. Each row represents one student. When the spreadsheet is imported, the tool will either generate a new account and CCCID, or identify if a duplicate account already exists in the system and populate the existing CCCID in the response. Staff may also include an existing student ID or other college-generated identifier in the spreadsheet for easy matching in their systems.

To get started with the multi account creation process, click the Multi Account Creation link in CCCAdministrator.

Screenshot showing Multi Account Creation highlighted.

Multi Account Creation Link

This will open a new window where you can download a template for tracking student information.

Multi Account Creation Screen

Use as much of the student’s current information to support the most efficient account recovery.

To prevent the additional password reset requirement following the initial sign-in following account creation, ensure the “use-temp-password” field in the upload file is set to FALSE.

Tool Functionality

Tool	Processes	Additional Benefits	Cautions

Tool

Processes

Additional Benefits

Cautions

Single Account Creation

Authorized staff can create one new student account at a time using the Add OpenCCC User interface with required fields.

Offers more security
No need to create a unique email account per student
Provides duplicate account prevention and error checking
No need to verify each account when created
Sets a flag to bypass the ID verification process (ID.me) and the CCCApply spam filter
Sets a flag to bypass the CCCApply spam filter when submitting an application using account
The student can take ownership of their account at any time

New account information must be manually tracked and maintained;
Auto defaults the “use temporary password” setting to TRUE, which requires an additional password reset upon initial sign-in.

Multi Account Creation*

Authorized staff can create multiple new student accounts at the same time using a configurable, formatted spreadsheet (Excel or CSV).

Provides duplicate account prevention and error checking
Upload spreadsheet has fewer required fields
No need to create a unique email account per student
No need to verify each account when created
Enables the college to set the “use temp password” setting for each individual account
The student can take ownership of their account at any time.

Use the student’s legal name and date of birth during account creation; this will ensure the account can be recovered, reclaimed and edited by the student in the future.
Allows the “use temporary password” field to be set to FALSE (avoid a password reset upon sign-in) or TRUE (requires a password reset upon sign-in).

^{*Recommended as the most efficient process for creating bulk accounts using the same verified institutional email account.}

Important: Using the Account Creation Tool requires the institution to create and employ various business and security processes for collecting, handling, and storing student data. Recommendations for these processes are provided in the College Preparation & Recommendations section below.

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College Preparation & Recommendations

Establishing the appropriate business processes will be essential for your institution to use the Account Creation tools effectively.

Business Process Recommendations

Tracking New Account Information

Develop a process for tracking and storing the data and credentials used for each new account created. The data captured should be:

email address
password
the “use-temporary-password” value set
unique CCCID generated during account creation or provided by the system through duplicate account prevention

Providing Students with Account Recovery Process

Creating clear messaging directing students how to reclaim, recover, and update their account profile using the temporary credentials used on their behalf.

Once the student is ready and able to reclaim ownership of the account created on their behalf, they will need the account credentials and student identity information used for the account recovery process. Ideally, a process for each use case should be developed.
Using the temporary credentials used by the Institution to create the account, the student will sign in, update their email address in their OpenCCC Account Profile, and then complete the password reset/verification process again using their now accurate information. For details on reclaiming ownership of their account, see the Account Workflows section below.

Obtaining Student Permission

It is recommended that Institutions implement a process, where reasonable, to obtain permission from the student before creating an account and/or submitting an application on their behalf.

For example, incarcerated students typically complete a paper application which both provides the student’s personal identity information and gives the college permission to enroll them in classes, including creating a student account and online application.

Access Prerequisites

Institution Authorization & Access

Authorized access to the OpenCCC Administrator and the Account Creation tools must be requested in writing by a director-level administrator, supervisor, or Dean at the CCC institution.

Send an email to CCCTC Staff Support along with a statement from a director-level administrator stating that “[approved staff’s name and title} “is authorized to use the OpenCCC Administrator system for the purposes of creating and maintaining one or more OpenCCC student accounts (CCCIDs) on behalf of students who do not currently have an account or who are unable to establish an account on their own.”

Authorized CCC Administrator (CAP) Account

The Account Creation tool functionality resides in the OpenCCC Administrator, the same Core Administrator Platform (CAP) system that houses the CCCApply Administrator. Access to the new administrator requires a CAP staff account with the new OpenCCC Admin role. All CAP accounts and roles are configured by the CCCTC Staff Support (staffsupportccctc@openccc.zendesk.com).

If you already have an established CAP account, contact CCCTC Staff Support to add the new OpenCCC Admin role to your access credentials. No other credentials are needed to access the new administrator system.
If you do not have a CAP account, send an email request to CCCTC Staff Support (staffsupportccctc@openccc.zendesk.com) to get that started.
- Consult your college IT department to obtain your EPPN credentials and provide them to the support engineer during account setup.
Once your staff account is created and/or upgraded with the new role, continue using your college-specific CCCApply Administrator URL to access the CCC Administrator tool via your institution IDP.

Best Practices & Recommendations

Below are suggested recommendations for streamlining the process of creating accounts and submitting applications on behalf of incarcerated students or students with limited technology.

Establish a Generic Institutional Email Address and OpenCCC Account

In order for the OpenCCC Account Creation tool to create an account on behalf of a student, the college or institution will use a process where multiple additional user accounts can be generated from one OpenCCC account with a verified (parent) institution email address. The institution or primary institution is created using the existing OpenCCC account creation and verification processes. With the email address from the primary account verified, the staff user can use the tool to create additional (proxy) accounts with email addresses that employ the “plus 1” workaround which will bypass the sign in email verification requirement (2FA) when the staff member creates an application or signs in on behalf of the student. All accounts created using the primary or parent email address, including each instance using “email + 1” will resolve back to the parent email account - which has already been verified.

One of our recommendations for streamlining the overall account creation and application submission processes on behalf of a student is to create a generic or primary OpenCCC account and email address that can be verified once and then used by the college to quickly create single or multiple additional accounts. Below are some tips to get you started.

Work with your college or district IT Administrator to set up a primary institution/parent email account for this purpose.
- This will allow multiple accounts to be created from one verified email address.
- The email address must be associated with your institution, not a personal account.
- All “email + 1” or child email addresses will resolve to the primary email address.
Create a generic OpenCCC account using the institution's email address and complete the verification process.
1. Go to the OpenCCC Sign In page using the CCCApply application link for your college.
2. Click on the “Create An Account” link and complete all required account fields for the primary/parent user.
3. Set Email as your Primary Contact Method and then verify the email address using the 2FA verification process.

Generating & Handling Secure Passwords

It is always important to generate, store, handle, and transmit passwords and other user credentials in a secure manner, especially when creating CCCID accounts and applications on behalf of a student. The CCC Technology Center adheres to the guidelines for Selecting Passwords/Phrases as specified in the CCCTC Information Security Policy which states that passwords/phrases MUST NOT be:

Revealed to anyone, including other institutional staff
Stored, written down, or transmitted using unencrypted text
Used, copied, or inserted into unencrypted email messages or other forms of electronic communication.

Maintaining a Secure Tracking Sheet for Created Accounts

In order to track and manage the accounts you create on behalf of students, we recommend maintaining a secure, password-protected spreadsheet for capturing the new user account data, including the email (which is also used as the username) and password. This process can help in the following ways:

Easily sign in as the user to create an application on their behalf.
Maintains a roster/record of all accounts created for a specific term, institution and/or agency.
Can be used to provide students their account information when they leave the institution, should they request it.

Below is an example of a simple tracking sheet created in Google Sheets that includes all the data fields required for account creation using the OpenCCC account creation tool.

Example of a spreadsheet used to track student account information.

Example Tracking Sheet

Security Considerations

Staff Account Sharing Prohibited

Approved users must agree to never share their authorized CAP account with other staff members for the purpose using the OpenCCC Administrator (or any purpose).

ID Verification Bypass

Accounts created by staff in the OpenCCC Administrator are assumed to be legitimate. By design applications submitted by staff will bypass the ID.me Verification workflow process, and the database will store a temporary value of “staff_verified” for the idme_workflow_status or verification_workflow_status field for one year from the date/time the account was created. The stored value expires after one year or switches to “unverified” when the student changes their email address or other profile data.

Fraud Status Value

Every “staff verified” CCCApply application submitted will run through the CCCApply spam filter, however they will not be held. Instead, a special fraud status field value will be stored in the database indicating that the application is “identified_verified_not_fraud” <fraud_status = 7>, verified by staff at the time of submission. Colleges should consult the CCCApply Standard & Noncredit data dictionary for more details.

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User Guide

Single Account Creation Process

The steps below outline the steps for creating a single OpenCCC student account in the OpenCCC Administrator.

Step 1: Sign In to the OpenCCC Administrator in CAP.

Navigate to the CCC Administrator (CAP) homepage using your existing college-specific URL configured to your college MIS code. Note: be sure to use the Production Admin environment URL unless you are testing in the Pilot Administrator.
From the landing page, select OpenCCC Administrator from the Applications drop menu in the header. The Add OpenCCC User page will display.

OpenCCC Administrator menu highlighted on Welcome to the CCC Administrator Homepage.

CCCAdministrator Welcome Screen

Step 2: Complete the Add OpenCCC User form.

Other than some system flags and default settings*, the single account creation form (Add OpenCCC User) requires the same information required in the standard OpenCCC account creation process. Please review the Add OpenCCC User Form Fields table below for field specifications and default settings.

Add OpenCCC User screen showing required fields.

Required Fields Example

Note: The email address will be used as the username, there is not a separate username field.

The Add OpenCCC User Form Fields

Field	Notes / Recommendations

Field	Notes / Recommendations
^{Required fields are shown in bold.}*
Email Address /* Confirm Email Address*	Must be a verified email account that can be accessed by the account creator.
Primary Phone Number	Recommend using the main phone number for the college or institution. This field is not required.
Phone Type	Phone type should always be landline if the main phone number for college or institution is used. This field is not required.
Address: Homeless	Homeless flag should always be “No”.
Country*	Enter the Country of the new user or the college or institution.
State*	Enter the State of the new user or the college or institution.
Street Address 1*	Enter the Street Address of the new user or the college or institution.
Street Address 2	Enter the Street Address 2 of the new user or the college or institution. This field is not required.
City*	Enter the City of the new user or the college or institution.
Postal Code*	Enter the Postal Code of the new user or the college or institution.
Legal First Name	Enter the new user’s Legal First Name. This field is not required but highly recommended.
Legal Middle Name	Enter the new user’s Legal Middle Name. This field is not required.
Legal Last Name*	Enter the new user’s Legal Last Name.
Preferred Name	Enter the new user’s preferred first name, if applicable. This field is not required.
Suffix	Enter a Suffix for the new user. This field is not required.
Date of Birth/ Confirm Date of Birth	Important! Enter the new user’s actual Date of Birth for account recovery purposes. Confirm the user’s actual Date of Birth.
SSN No	Social Security Type: None
SSN Exception	Social Security Number: Other Exception
SSN Type	Social Security Number Type (SSN or TIN)
SSN Display	Last four digits of SSN for display
SSN^*	Social Security Number
Password* / Confirm Password*	Password requires at least 8 characters, one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, one special character (!, @, #, $, %, ^, & or *), and may not contain your name. Passwords MUST be unique and non-predictable. Recommended: Use a unique password that follows the CCCITC security guidelines described in the link below. Important! The “use temporary password” field - a backend setting - defaults to TRUE when using the single account creation process.
Terms of Use Agreement*	Important! The Terms of Use agreement must be accepted to complete the process and save the new account.

Reminder to Create Secure Passwords

It is important to generate, store, handle, and transmit passwords in a secure manner, especially when managing user credentials on behalf of students. CCCTC recommends using a password generating tool such as LastPass Password Generator to ensure strong, random passwords.

Step 3: Save Form & Capture CCCID

After entering all the required fields in the Add OpenCCC User page, click “Save” to finish creating the new account. A Success notification box will display a confirmation of the new account’s key credential elements: email address (which is also used as the username) and the CCCID.

We recommend capturing this information on your secure tracking sheet. Please ensure that the sheet is password-protected and stored in a secure location.

Confirmation screen showing that new user was successfully added.

Successfully Added User Screen

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Multi Account Creation Process

The ability to create multiple accounts is also under-development. This process will mostly support colleges that have a number of current or former students who may have enrolled prior to the college implementing the new OpenCCCApply system.

Process

Go to the CCC Administrator > OpenCCC Administrator using the unique college-specific URL configured to your college MIS code.
Click on the Multi Account Creation link in the header of the Add OpenCCC User page.

Multi Account Creation Link

From the Multi Account Creation screen, download the multi account upload template by clicking the Download Template button at the bottom of the screen.
1. The template provides the columns and format of the information required.
  Download Template Button
2. If downloaded successfully, a Success message will appear.

The Multi Account Creation screen is shown with a Success banner, indicating that the template download was successful.

Successful Download Screen

Open the downloaded file named “bulkAccountCreateTemplate”, typically it can be found in your local downloads folder.

Recent Downloads

The screen shows paths to other folders where the CSV template may be stored.

Application Selection

Complete the multi account creation file with the required information and save in the CSV format.
1. Open the downloaded template (CSV file) in your preferred spreadsheet application, such as MicroSoft Excel, and populate each column row with the required data.
2. IMPORTANT: Column order is important and specified in the header row.
3. Leave the last three columns blank.

See information for populating the multi account creation file below.

Return to the Multi Account Creation screen and prepare to upload your saved CSV file.
1. First click the Choose File button to relocate your saved file.
2. Then click Upload File to complete the upload.

The Choose File button is highlighted on the Multi Account Creation screen.

Chose File Button

Upload File Button

Following the upload, the file is processed. A Success or Failure message will be displayed indicating the status of the multi account creation process and execution time. If successful, the results can be downloaded. If the process fails, the file should be corrected and re-uploaded.

A Success message is shown on the Multi Account Creation screen informing the user that the multi account creation process was successful and the results are ready to be downloaded.

Successful Upload Screen

View the results of your upload. Click the Download Results button. Find and open the file in your preferred spreadsheet program.

Download Results Button

The results will be displayed in the last three columns of the sheet: “status”, “cccid” and “message” columns.

The account processing results are contained in the last three columns of the Multi Account Creation file, which are highlighted here.

Multi Account Upload Results

Recommended: Use the same spreadsheet for ongoing uploads. Ensure your file is password protected and stored in a secure location.

Note: the Notes column at the far right is not validated and any values entered in that column will appear in the file that is returned to the user by the bulk upload tool.

Populating the Multi Account Creation File

While the single user account creation process mimics the primary account creation process that students use to create their OpenCCC account, the multi account creation process requires slightly different input requirements. These differences are described below.

^*^{Indicates a required field.}

Account Fields	Column Header	Notes & Recommendations

Account Fields	Column Header	Notes & Recommendations
Email Address*	email	Must be a verified email account that can be accessed by the account creator. Unlike the single account creation process, the multi account creation sheet does not require the email address to be confirmed and entered twice.
Legal First Name	first