So, you heard about the recent changes to the online campus directory and were totally like “Sweet, dude! I always wanted a UCSC profile! It’s like Facebook, but all academic and stuff!” then we’re here to help. This how-to tells you how to set up your Campus Directory page, as well as lets you know of a couple of pitfalls to look out for. Without adieu, here goes…
Setting Up Your CruzID Gold Password
Unless you’ve printed something in the library, you probably don’t have a CruzID Gold Password. The most common CruzID password is a Blue password, used with SlugMail, ResNet, CruzNet, and in the computer labs. Practical uses for your CruzID Gold Password (for now, at least) include printing in the library and… well… editing your campus directory entry. So, yeah….
But we’re not here to debate why on Earth there’s two passwords; we’re here to get you hooked up with a Gold password, because you’ll need it to access the campus directory.
Head on over to the CruzID Identity Manager at cruzid.ucsc.edu. You’ll be prompted to log in with your CruzID Blue password. Once you’ve logged, you’ll see a selection of options, but the one we’re looking for is “Set CruzID Gold Password.” Click that link, enter the last four digits of your SSN and your new password, and submit the form. Assuming all goes well, you’ll get a message saying your new password has been set. Huzzah!
If you’ve set up your CruzID Gold Password before, you’ll see a link that says “Change CruzID Gold Password.” As the link suggests, click that to change your Gold password. You’ll need to know your current Gold password to change it, though. If you forgot your password and didn’t set up security questions, you’re going to need to contact ITS to get that fixed.
Setting Up Your Directory Entry
Now that we’ve got our CruzID Gold Password, let’s go set up our campus directory profile. To begin, go to campusdirectory.ucsc.edu. You’ll see a link that’s labeled “Update Your Directory Information Online.” Click that link and log in with your CruzID Gold Password. If all goes well, you’ll see a long page with fields you can fill in with your information.
There are a couple of pitfalls worth noting that you’ll want to take into account when creating your profile. First, many fields in the form have length restrictions, some as tiny as 255 characters, with others as large as 5000 characters. The system won’t cut you off while you’re typing if you go over the limit, but if you attempt to submit the form with a given field over the character limit, it will reject your submitted information and ask you to edit the offending field. To give yourself some time to write your responses (and so you can have a convenient word count), try writing your responses in a word processing application first, then copy and paste it into the web form.
Arguably the more annoying pitfall is you can’t edit any information whatsoever without adding a department affiliation in your profile. The system will reject your entry if it doesn’t include a selection for “Department,” and once you add it, you’ll be able to change your department affiliation entry, but you won’t be able to remove it completely. Probably not a big deal (it’s not like it’s your SSN or anything like that), but it’s something you should be aware of going in.
Okay, so once you’ve entered all of your information, don’t forget to click “Save Changes” at the bottom of the page or your information won’t be saved.
And that’s it!
But Why Would I Want to Do This?
Of course, it’s always up to you to decide how much information you’d like to share on the internet, and the best rule of thumb I’ve followed is not to share anything online you wouldn’t want public. Or, at the very least, check a website’s Privacy Policy before submitting information to it. If you don’t want any trace of your enrollment at UCSC online, you’re best off restricting the publication of your info to the campus directory (here’s an FAQ on how to do that).
There is something to be said, though, about being active in controlling one’s web presence. With the new features, you can kinda think of the new campus directory as a mini-resume of your work at UCSC. Best of all, it’s now a public entry you can edit and control. If you don’t have a presence on the web already and want to create one, this could work well as a basic starting point. For the more adventurous, you can set up a small personal website for your academic work on your UCSC account, then link to it from your campus directory entry.
Ultimately, if you’re looking for a simple tool for creating a public academic profile, the new campus directory is here for you to use. And while it’s basic, it gets the job done.
