PIC account

PIC — Quick user guide

This short guide explains how to register, confirm your account, request access to a group, and what to do after access is granted.

Follow these steps if you are a PIC user and need access to resources managed through the account Experiments page.

1) Create your PIC account

1. Open the PIC registration page (the site registration link provided by PIC).
2. Fill the registration form with your name, a PIC-acceptable username (we recommend first letter of the name + surname truncated at 8 chars), and your email.
3. Choose a password and submit the form.
4. You will receive an email with a confirmation link — click the link to activate your account.

Notes:

• If you don’t receive the email, check your spam folder and then contact the administrators.
• Password rules are enforced by the realm; if the site rejects your password, follow the guidance on the form.

2) Log in and open Account → Experiments

1. Log in to PIC with your new account.
2. Go to Account and open the Experiments page (if you used the registration link you should already be there, else navigate to it).

What you can do here:

• Link external IDPs (if offered) for automatic group membership.
• Request access to groups that are managed manually (non-IDP groups).

3) Request access to a group (manual approval flow)

1. On the Experiments page, find the group you need and click Request Access.
2. Either:
   • Select a configured sponsor for the group (if available), or
   • Enter sponsor name and email in the provided fields.
3. Submit the request.

What happens next:

• If the group is backed by an external IDP, you may be asked to log in to that IDP (e.g., Google) to complete linking.
• If the group uses manual approval, a signed approval email will be sent to the group’s contact person(s) or the chosen sponsor.
• Until the request is approved, you can only use your account and public parts of services. Please do not send multiple requests for the same group while waiting for approval.

4) After access is granted — try services

Once the contact or IDP approval is completed and you are a member of the group:

• You should be able to access group-only web UIs and services.
• You may be able to SSH to service UIs or jump hosts the PIC team provides (follow PIC-specific SSH instructions).
• You can open Jupyter (or other service UIs) and run notebooks or jobs according to the permissions granted by your group.

If a resource still seems unavailable after membership is granted, wait a few minutes (background scripts may run) and retry. If the problem persists, contact the administrators with:

• Your username
• The group name
• A short description of the problem

5) Lost membership due to inactivity or offboarding

For IDP groups we periodically (or on login) verify your membership in the external IDP project.

• If you are no longer a member (inactivity / removal) you will be offboarded and shown a message at login. You can then re-request access via the Experiments page.
• If you encounter issues re-requesting, contact the administrators.

Grace period (only for IDPs that DO NOT grant offline access)

Some external IDPs do not allow us to request offline tokens. In that case your group may define a gracePeriodDays value.

What this means for you:

1. At the end of each grace period window your membership will be removed automatically and the IDP link will be cleared. You must log back into the external IDP (and if needed re-link or re-request access) to regain membership.
2. During the grace period, if your institution grants you new privileges (e.g. access to new data) and you do not see them reflected in PIC, you can force a refresh by UNLINKING and re-linking the IDP account:
   • Go to: Account → Account Security → Linked Accounts (Example URL: https://idp-test.pic.es/realms/PIC/account/account-security/linked-accounts)
   • Click Unlink for the external IDP.
   • Confirm (ask the contact if unsure), then link again via the Experiments page or the linking button.
   • After re-linking, new privileges should appear (may take a short delay while scripts run).

If in doubt before unlinking, ask the group’s contact person. Unlinking does not delete your PIC account; it only removes the connection to that external project until you link again.

Troubleshooting & common issues

• I didn’t get the confirmation email: check spam, then contact admins.
• The Experiments page shows no groups: ask your admin if your account has correct attributes or if the group exists.
• I requested access but nothing happened: contact the group’s contact person or the admin team; provide the request time and the group name.

– End of guide –