Validating and authenticating student accounts

[Anonymous]

I am a middle school teacher who teaches every 8th grader in our school (300 kids a year) how to design and 3D prints parts with Fusion. It has become a love/hate relationship with Fusion due to setting up the students' accounts. For the last 3 years I would have every student create an account, they would enter their school email address, dob, school, enrollment date, graduation date, etc. After all of the that they would have 30 days to use the software. After a few times through the process I discovered that you have to back to the Autodesk site and click "sign in" and then "get access". After that they would go back to Fusion and click "continue" which would prompt the message: "Your registration is being processed". Usually a day or 2 later their accounts would work. You would get that same message whether regardless of whether you went back to the site to "get access". While that process might not sound difficult- try doing with 20 eighth graders at a time. 🙂

Unfortunately an already tedious process got worse. Last week I had a new student join my class and now Autodesk requires proof that he is a student. I am not sure why his school email is no longer sufficient. In 2 months when I get a new group of 120 eighth graders I have no idea how I am going to get them all set up/validated. Please help!

Thanks

[gmelantoni]

Hi wilsoeri. 

When a user goes to the url fusion.online.autodesk.com, we try to capture any active identity token. So, if they are signed already with their Autodesk account, the first sign in is skipped. That first one is to access the streaming service, which is provided by a third party. We also use that first sign in to validate the user is a student, and block any other users that don't have an education profile. Again, this first sign on is only needed if the user is not already signed to anything other Autodesk site in that computer. 

The second sign in is on the virtual machine, to enter Fusion 360. Since the identity token is stored on the machine and this is a different computer, we need to ask for credentials again. 

Hope it makes sense. 

By the way, I have seen cases in which the second sign in (on the virtual machine) takes time and sometimes loops back to asking email again. If you saw that behavior, it is a problem we need to understand how to reproduce and fix with our third party provider. 

[wilsoeri]

I've had students sign in and then we go to autodesk education with them signed in, (initials on top right). Even if they have confirmed they are a student it still says get started or sign in. When they click on either it requires them to sign in. It sometimes asks them to confirm eligibility again. some I have had to submit their ID photo twice on separate days after it worked the first time. I just looked at my autodesk education account and had to reconfirm. It was saying get product not access for Fusion 360. It just takes several steps and multiple sign ins to get to the point where we can even sign in to the actual fusion 360.

I'm not sure if that made sense but just trying to say we need to log in maybe 3-5 times before I can get a student onto fusion 360 sometimes.

[gmelantoni]

Ok. My explanation was about the reason we might ask for one or two sign ins on the Fusion online page. What happens on the education page is not something I can explain. I'll make sure the right people see the post and provide an explanation. 

[kmcgheeCMFPG]

As an educator with the same issues of authenticating, I don't think we really care why it is doing it. What would be more beneficial is having the people who need to fix this work on that rather then giving us an explanation. How about making it real simple. Have the educator validate their single account, that is easy, my staff id is allowed to be uploaded. Then let me add students to my team hub, and grade level. If a student is in my class, they are in my hub, they get full access for a year and if they take the course again I add them to my new class, new grade level, the renew again.

It's clear from the comments you are loosing educators, and thus students. You know the value of giving access to the software and how it pays dividends down the road, why continue with a broken system.

[wilsoeri]

Thank you for writing that. I completely agree. I am just trying to explain what happens so it can be fixed. I just had a student that we logged in about 8 times and fusion 360 didn't even show up on the screen that said her education account was validated. It showed other programs but not fusion 360. I have students that want to give up and are upset about this affecting their grades. I agree I am looking at something else. I have been using Autodesk since I was in high school in 2005 and have always advocated for its use in all the schools I've taught in but this is really making it difficult to use.

[gabe.anderson]

Hi @tjpDBZVZ,

Thanks for sharing your input, and sorry for the frustration you've had in getting your students up and running with Fusion 360.

Did clicking ACCESS on the Fusion 360 product card in Get Products do the trick for students who confirmed eligibility but were stuck in trial? 

Thanks, too, for the input on SSO.

We know it can be a frustrating process to get students up and running with Autodesk products, but please know we are reading all of the feedback here and elsewhere, and are continuing to explore how we can improve the process for educators and students.

-Gabe

[kmcgheeCMFPG]

I will add that the only way I have been able to get my students authenticated is to click on get Fusion and actually download it. It seems like it only registers the students account if it sees we download the product.

[gabe.anderson]

Hi @kmcgheeCMFPG,

Thanks for sharing. To clarify: It's actually clicking the "Get product" link followed by the ACCESS button on the Fusion 360 product card that enables the entitlement. That does start the product download, but it's not necessary to complete the download, especially if Fusion 360 is already installed.  

[Anonymous]

Just wondering if this has made any progress. Currently looking at Autocad for our students, but if this is the process needed to add students it may not be viable. Big concerns are time and GDPF compliance. 

[kmcgheeCMFPG]

Deleted and reposted.

[kmcgheeCMFPG]

@gabeanderson Ok seriously you, AUTODESK, are a joke at this point with student education account setup, why you can't fix this is beyond me. You obviously have very good programmers for the program itself, perhaps use some of them to fix this signup problem. 

I signed up 9 new students yesterday and guess what, it took 2 hours and was more painful than ever.

I started every student off at this link (https://www.autodesk.com/education/edu-software/overview?sorting=featured&page=1) and we worked through each step window by window. During that process some students went right through and got what they needed, at least 4 needed both the initial verification and education verification email resent.

2 students when they completed the initial account setup instead of being sent to the education verification process were sent to the autodesk pay to access page and we had to reuse the link above to get back and continue.

In order to even get the "verify education email" some students got it right away, others had to click the "get started" link in the fusion 360 product page. Some then got the email right away, others were told they were not eligible and then got the email. Some students clicked the education verification email and were sent to the page and able to click the "get started" link and proceed to the next pages eventually able to download, but most were stuck in limbo and from my experience if they do not click that link and get to download the software it will never give them education account access.

8 are now set up but I have one student who CANNOT verify. We have tried multiple computers multiple times, when the student tries to enter the name of our school NO school shows up. NONE at all. I have never seen this one before so congrats autodesk you made it worse. We click on the link for find your school, and entered the school website, it found our school, we clicked the copy school name and pasted it in the field as instructed and guess what it did not work, says the school does not exist. Every other student saw multiple schools with similar spellings as ours, this student, nothing.

Could someone at autodesk please contact me by my email you have on file so we can fix this one students account.

I will ride out this semester but if you can't get this fixed, I will be moving on. How hard is it to make it so teachers can add students to their classroom and that gives them a years license, no messing about, no letters, no id nothing. It could all be done through the team account. Invite someone to my team, boom they are a student obviously and they get access, no signups, not messing about, no verifications, selecting students etc. Don't want to do it by teams, fine, should be very simple to make an interface that allows this too.

[tjpDBZVZ]

I am trying to persevere with this, but after an hour in class we have 3
students working, and another 17 who seem to be stuck in a loop
authenticating.
I have been to all the machines and done a LAB INSTALL, which seems to be
hit and miss as to whether it works when students log in.
I was brought up thinking AUTODESK was the gold standard as far as software
was concerned, but the stupid systems and hoops we need to jump through are
making me ( and now 3 yeargroups of students) think differently

[gabe.anderson]

Hi @kmcgheeCMFPG,

Thanks for sharing your experience, and I'm sorry it's been such a frustrating experience for you and your students to get up and running with Fusion 360. I sent you an email to connect with you and learn more.

We know the existing experience can be challenging, and please know that we are working to improve it.  

Regards,

Gabe

[gabe.anderson]

Hi @tjpDBZVZ,

Thanks for sharing, and sorry to hear you've had this experience.

The key is that each student, after logging in, needs to make sure to click "Get product" -> ACCESS on the Get Products page—even if they're accessing from a lab machine. This button activates the Fusion 360 entitlement for the student and allows them to login to the product:

I also sent you a direct message in case you'd like to connect and discuss further.

Regards,

Gabe

[gabe.anderson]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thanks for asking. No updates to share just yet, but we are working on how to improve this process for educators. 

[kmcgheeCMFPG]

Yes I deduced this about a month ago with my last batch of students, the problem is that most of the time, student are either dumped into the purchase page for no reason, or the can click get product and nothing happens, or get product icon does not appear at all. It is very inconsistent and after seeing it happen multiple times on different computers I am positive it is on your end in your website code or something.

[wilsoeri]

Access doesn't always show up. Even after  you verify sometimes it still says get product and you have to sign back in, even though you were signed in already. some students have to go through this loop multiple times before access shows up.

[wilsoeri]

Completely agree! It is not consistent, sometimes it takes a while to load the page and if you click before it refreshed itself you get completely different options.

[Anonymous]

I have my school registered, however Fusion asks each student for school ID. We tried using the Young Scot photo ID card, however this is not acceptable. Please advise how we can overcome this, our school would not appreciate creating 800 letters to acknowledge each students enrolment in school. 

All school personnel have a @Anonymous.sch.uk email address, the sch.uk meaning school in the UK, could this in itself not suffice. people cannot create their own glow email account, they are created by authorised personnel on enrolment of each student.

We are desperate to get this up and running

[Anonymous]

have you thought of using Onshape, it is web based so no download required, loads of youtube tutorial videos available and they have an app that can be used on IPads. we are considering this now as the registration process for Fusion is making it impossible for us to use. As a teacher I have created an account but cannot register my classes.