On Friday, September 30, 2011, there will be a change to the University of Minnesota login page. This is the page that you use to log in to University of Minnesota applications such as email, calendar, and Netfiles.

Description of the change
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is adding a link to this page, which will allow users to create a new guest account. For a visual demonstration of the change, compare the following:

• Old login page
• New login page

Reason for the change
Our current CAH login page deployment has a feature that allows an application to request changes to the appearance of the login page. For example, several applications that allow guest account logins use this feature to enable the display of a "Create a new guest account" button. So when a user attempts to log into an application that allows guest accounts, they see this button on the login page. But when they attempt to log into an application that does not use guest accounts, they do not see this button.

The look and feel of this login page is due for an overhaul to meet new branding and mobile requirements. This update will be implemented when the new CAH -independent Shib implementation goes live in January. This new Shibboleth implementation, however, does not support this feature that allows applications to request changes to the appearance of the login page. Instead, on this new page, there will be a "Create a guest account" link active on the page at all times.

The problem, and the need for this short term change, comes from the fact that a number of applications that require having the guest account button appear on the login screen and have been using this "guestable" feature will be converting to Shib prior to the rollout of the new look and feel. Since we need to have a way to support these applications, we are therefore adding the "Create a guest account" link to all login pages, regardless of whether the application requested it. This is a much more desirable solution than making significant changes to the CAH integration code, considering that CAH is going away at the end of the year.