What is Crowd?

Crowd is a component of UCAR's Atlassian software infrastructure used to provide access to the UCAR Enterprise Service Desk along with the help desks supporting Research Computing, the Research Data Archive, and the Digital Asset Services Hub.  Users without a CIT account will use a Crowd account instead, which can be created manually from the help portals, or automatically when submitting a ticket via email.  



I received an email telling me my Crowd password will expire and that I should change it.  Is it legitimate?

Crowd accounts follow UCAR password policy, requiring passwords to be changed every 180 days.  When a password is 150 days old, crowd will begin notifying a user to modify their password prior to this date via email.

If in doubt about the legitimacy of the email, or to follow best practices regarding account security, users are encouraged to directly visit https://crowd.ucar.edu where they can login and change their password.



How do I change my Crowd password?

You can change your password on crowd by editing your profile via the following procedure:


Login to https://crowd.ucar.edu .  Your username will be your email address.  If you don't know your Crowd password, please follow the forgotten password instructions in the following section.


In the sidebar on the left side, select "Change password"


Enter your current Crowd password, and then your new password twice.

Passwords need to be at least 9 characters, including at least one of each of the following: uppercase alpha character, lowercase alpha character, numeric character, special character.  You may not reuse a previous password.





How do I recover a forgotten Crowd password?

You can generate a new crowd password by following the following procedure:


Visit https://crowd.ucar.edu .  On the login screen, follow the "Forgot your password?" link.


On the Forgot login details page, select the "I have forgotten my password" radio button, and enter your email address in the Username field.  Select "Send email"


You will receive an email from UCAR Crowd providing a link to reset your password.  This link will be to https://crowd.ucar.edu and will include a token only good for 24 hours.    Following the link will allow you to reset your password, after which you can login to the service desks or to Crowd to login to your account.





Enabling 2FA for a crowd user

You can enable 2FA on your crowd account via the following procedure.  If enabling 2FA, please make sure to properly save the recovery information.  If for some reason you lose your 2FA information, email help@ucar.edu from the email address used for your account.  Recovery may take multiple business days and will require account verification.

Login to https://crowd.ucar.edu

Click on the user icon in the upper right corner, and go to "My Profile"

Select Two-step verification from the sidebar.  Select Unlock settings and input your crowd password to proceed.

Press "Set up" to enroll with the authentication app of your choice (such as duo, microsoft authenticator, authy, google authenticator).  Scan the provided QR code with the app or use the "set up manually" link to get the TOTP key to add to your chosen app.  Enter the verification code provided by the app.

Save the provided account recovery key.  


If you lose access to your 2FA app, use the saved recovery information to bypass the 2FA authentication and then disable/renable it.  If you do not have your recovery key, email help@ucar.edu from the email associated with your crowd account.  Please allow for several business days and verification contact before your account can be recovered.  You can continue to submit tickets to the helpdesks via email in the meantime.