Support for Machine Account Owners

The Education Sector Logon (ESL) was upgraded during 2018. The upgraded system is now live in Shared Test, Pre Production, and Production.

What is a Machine Account Owner?

Machine accounts are a type of ESL account that is used by Student Management Systems (SMSs) to log in to education sector systems such as the National Student Index (NSI) and Early Learning Information (ELI).  In the upgraded ESL, the Machine Account Owner is responsible for the management of the machine account/s they own. Only the Machine Account Owner can set or reset the password for a machine account – Education Service Desk can no longer do this.

ESL Self Service

The upgraded ESL provides a simple interface for the management of machine accounts. A Machine Account owner must log-in to ESL Self Service with their individual user account in order to manage their machine account(s).

ESL Self Service [Production] is at https://identity.education.govt.nz/ui/selfservice/home

ESL Self Service [Pre-Production] is at https://iteidentity.education.govt.nz/ui/selfservice/home 

ESL Self Service [UAT - Shared Test] is at https://identity.educationtest.govt.nz/ui/selfservice/home

Key changes to machine account behaviour with the upgraded ESL

A summary of the key changes to machine accounts are:

• ESL enforces stronger distinction between user accounts and machine accounts
• You can no longer login to websites with a machine account, including to ESL self-service.
• The Machine Account Owner must log in to ESL Self Service with their individual user account to complete the setup of a new machine account.
• The Machine Account Owner must log in to ESL Self Service with their individual user account to change the password for their machine account.
• Machine accounts do not get ‘locked’ in the ESL. This will make the sequence of updating a password easier for Machine Account Owners.
• Machine account passwords no longer expire in the ESL. This will make the sequence of updating a password easier for Machine Account Owners.
• Education Service Desk cannot set or reset the password for a machine account.

Resetting the password for your SMS

To reset the password for an ESL account used in your Student Management System (SMS) you will need to complete the password reset process in ESL before you enter your updated password into your SMS.

For a machine account, you must log in to self service with your individual user account to then be able to  change the password for a machine account that you are the machine account owner of.

If you try to log in to self service with your machine account details it will NOT work.

The following instructions are for ESL Production environment.

1. Login to Self Service with your user account (that is the machine account owner) https://identity.education.govt.nz/ui/selfservice/home
2. On the left hand menu select the Edit my machine accounts tab.
3. A list of the Machine accounts that you are the owner of will be listed. To the far right will be a Set password link.
4. Select the Set password link for the machine account you want to change the password for.
5. Create and confirm the new password for your machine account and update/save the cahnges.
6. Once you have reset the password, you can then access your SMS with the new password for your machine account.

FAQS for Machine Accounts