Creating an Onyen

What is the Onyen?

The Onyen is the sign-on name used to login to numerous services across campus. For an introduction to what the Onyen is as well as important links to crucial Onyen information please read the article What is an Onyen?.

The Onyen provides access to the following systems and services:

Email Service

Email access is free to all faculty, staff, and students at UNC. Your email address will be youronyen@email.unc.edu.

Bioscience Computing Services

Bioscience computing access is restricted to researchers using molecular biology tools.

Scientific Computing Services

Scientific computing is provided to researchers who need high performance computation cycles. Applications include AVS, Gaussian, LIMDEP, Maple, and MOPAC.

Statistical Computing Services

Statistical computing provides access to a host of research and statistical programs, including SAS, SPSS, and STATA.

Web Publication Services

Web publication services provide web space for UNC-CH faculty, staff, students, departments, and organizations.

All UNC-CH students, faculty, and staff can obtain an Onyen provided they have an active affiliation with the university. In general, an active affiliation means that an individual is enrolled in a course of study as a student or is a member of the faculty or staff. Information on how one becomes or maintains an active affiliation with UNC-CH is located on the PID Office's page. This information is updated every night, so once any paperwork problems are addressed, an individual should be able to create an Onyen no later than the next day.

Creating an Onyen

1. Find a computer that is connected to the Internet, open a web browser, and go to the Onyen Services page. If you would like step-by-step illustrated instructions for how to create an Onyen, please look at this document How do I Create an Onyen?.

2. Click Create an Onyen .

3. On the next page, read the Onyen Terms Of Agreement and click the button at the bottom of the page if you agree to accept and abide by the Onyen Terms of Agreement (you cannot create an Onyen if you do not agree).

4. Click the Continue button and follow the instructions as they appear on the subsequent pages.

5. Be sure to remember both your Onyen and your password! Otherwise you will have to go to the ITS Response Center in the Undergraduate Library and admit that you forgot your password , which is always embarrassing!

Once you have created your Onyen, most services that require an Onyen to access will be available to you immediately. There are, however, a few Onyen services that will not be available for several hours. Principally, these services are being able to receive email (you can send email immediately), logging on to isis.unc.edu, and logging on to the research and statapps platforms. Please note that you will not be able to log into Blackboard until after 12:00 noon of the next business day.

Creating and Changing Your Password

Always keep security in mind when creating your password. The following is a security checklist that you should use when creating your Onyen password:

1. Your password must contain a minimum of eight (8) characters and can have a maximum of fourteen (14) characters.

2. Passwords are case sensitive, so capitalization and lowercase letters do matter.

3. At least one of the password characters must be a number.

4. At least one of the password characters must be from the following set: ?! @ # $ % &amp; * + = { } ? < > " -

5. Your password cannot contain a substring of six (6) characters in common with your Onyen or match the length of your Onyen minus one character. (For example, your Onyen is rbwille. An unacceptable password would be #rbwill3, because "rbwill" contains a six-character string of your Onyen and is also one character short of being your Onyen. However, #rbxx31 would be okay.)

6. Your password should be something secret and hard to figure out. For example, do not choose well-known terms (like unc or tarheel or Carolina) that others could easily guess.

Our security practices dictate that passwords must be changed every 90 days to protect you from identity theft and prevent unauthorized use.

We recommend you set up the Challenge Response system so you may reset your own password if it is ever forgotten.

You can change your password by pointing your browser to the Onyen Services page and clicking on the Manage Password button. If you have forgotten your password, this page will explain where to go to get a new one. If you want to change your password, you must enter your Onyen, your current password, and your desired new password. You must enter your new password twice to avoid problems with typos. While it is advised that you not write down your password, it is critical that you remember it because there is no way for us to recover a forgotten password.

After you have entered your new password, click on the Continue button to finalize the change. If your proposed new password meets the requirements established by the ITS Security Office, your new password will be activated immediately.

Finally, take a look at the Password Change Checklist and reconcile those passwords that you can. It's a lot easier to change your password in three places than it is to remember three sets of passwords!

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