Primary Account

This type of account is automatically created for students, faculty and staff at the start of their affiliation with the University.

• For students, the account is created upon admission to the University. Students are provided with information about their new accounts by email and activate their accounts at My Pitt (my.pitt.edu).
  
• Faculty and staff receive information about their accounts from their Responsibility Center Account Administrator.
  

Primary accounts remain valid during the time a student is enrolled or throughout the period a faculty or staff member is employed by the University.

Sponsored Account

Sponsored accounts are intended to provide access to those individuals who are not eligible for a primary account but have legitimate business with the University that requires an account. RC Administrators are responsible for limiting the number of these accounts and ensuring they are only used for legitimate University purposes. Additionally, it is the RC Administrator's responsibility to:

• Enter the information about the account owner correctly
• Ensure there is a valid reason to create the account and a valid reason to maintain it
  
• Ensure the account exists only as long as it needs to exist  

A sponsored account requires the designation of both an account owner and an account sponsor.  The account owner is the person that will be using the account. The account sponsor is an individual within the responsibility center who has a primary account and will take responsibility for the use of the account.

The account owner must exist within the Central Directory Service (CDS). If it is necessary to have an individual created in CDS, please contact the Technology Help Desk.

A sponsored account is only meant to exist for a limited period of time. An expiration date is set at the time the account is created. The expiration date should be set to the first date that the account is no longer needed. The expiration date should not be set beyond the end of the fiscal year.

Before renewing or extending the expiration date of a sponsored account, the RC Administrator should contact the account owner or account sponsor and ask them to justify why the account needs to continue to exist.  

Jumpstart Accounts

Jumpstart accounts are meant to be used when an employee needs access to University computing resources but cannot yet obtain a primary account because their employee record (ER) is not yet available within the Central Directory Service.

If the ER becomes available within 30 days of the jumpstart account's creation, the jumpstart account will automatically become a primary account. If the ER does not become available within 30 days, the jumpstart account will terminate.

It is necessary to supply the individual's Social Security Number to create a jumpstart account. This ensures that the individual created within the Central Directory Service will match the employee record when it becomes available.