With so many sites, programs and so on these days requiring a password, it is easy to get confused and annoyed if you either can’t remember one or have lost it.
More frustrating I think is when you are forced to change your password for whatever reason, say unauthorised access.
Perhaps most infuriating of all is when you haven’t a clue how to change your password.
I came across something the other day, which to be honest would leave me spitting. It was a seven-step procedure for re-setting your Lotus Notes password. The first three steps require you to login to three different websites or parts of the site – the main administration website, the administration tab, then the manage organisation tab.
You then have to click on the Lotus Notes navigation pane to access Lotus Notes.
Once this procedure is finished you then have to click on the individual users to reset their passwords.
After this, you carry out the usual change password and save routine. However, you aren’t finished there it seems.
Apparently you must download the new password to the Lotus Notes client. Furthermore, you only have five days to do so; otherwise you have to start over again.
Now I appreciate fully that Lotus Notes is a great program for security, but why bother when you can change a Google password easily at just the click of a couple of buttons. What’s more, if there is an issue such as unauthorised access, Google will automatically notify you of this.
All in all, Lotus Notes is way too complicated for me.
So are you talking about a user changing their own password or an administrator changing a user’s password?
Either way, you’re spreading incorrect information. I’d love to see a link to what you “came across the other day.”
In my shop, we have a token based single sign on integration with Microsoft Active Directory. Users authenticate to the Lotus Domino server behind the scenes via AD. If they have to change their Windows password, they change it. One step.
As an administrator, if I have to manually change a user’s password, I’d change it in Active Directory just as simply. One step.
If I wasn’t set up with this type of integrated authentication, I’d change a user’s password by highlighting the user’s name in the Lotus Domino Directory and clicking the Change Password link under the ID Vault heading. One step. Users could also change their own password by clicking File > Security > User Security, then hitting the Change Password button. Simple.
Without knowing more details it sounds like your admin may not quite have everything the way it could be to make it easier on the person.
That’s a very long and onerous process!
However, you do need to understand that that is NOT the normal Notes reset process – the organization has designed some kind of unique/special process designed (apparently) to torture users.