How to use our website If you are having any difficulty using our site please read this page first - it may well answer your query. If not, contact Prospect's website team by email.
Contents
General information about our site, including our terms and conditions
Members-only and reps-only pages Why do members have to register - why can't we just log in using our membership number? Are the registration and login systems secure? Logging in Problems registering to use the members-only area? Already registered but forgotten your password? Problems with the password reminder system? Already registered and can remember your password but are unable to log in? Accessibility issues Downloading files from our document library Finding what youre looking for in the document library Data protection notice General information about our site Our site is optimised to work with a wide range of recent web browsers. Some pages may not display properly in older browsers, but we have tried to minimise any such problems. Please email our website team if you encounter any browser problems. Please read the full terms and conditions for use of our website.
Back to contents Members-only and reps-only pages Much of our content is restricted to Prospect members only. Members - you need to log in to get access to the restricted content. And you need to register before you can log in for the first time. Back to contents Why do members have to register - why can't we just log in using our membership number? This is for your own security. Once you log into the members' area of the site you get access to your personal profile page - the key details from your membership record. We need to be sure that you are the only person who gets access to this information. Simply logging in with membership numbers wouldn't be secure, because they aren't necessarily private - they are printed on the Profile mailing label for example, so other members may have access to your number. To register, you enter your surname, membership number and home postcode. Once we've confirmed your identity and your membership status, you set up a personal password which is associated with your membership number and your email address. This is used on future visits to the site. So nobody else could log in with your membership number, because they would also need to know your personal password. Back to contents Are the registration and login systems secure? Yes. We use SSL technology certified by Thawte to ensure that all the details you submit are fully encrypted. Back to contents Logging in We recommend that you log in as soon as you visit our site. Many of our pages contain both public and members-only content. If you visit a page before you log in then go back to it, your browser may have stored the public version in its memory or 'cache'. You can avoid this problem by logging in straight away. Once you've logged in, one of the main navigation links will change, from 'join us' to 'recruitment'. We encourage you to visit the 'recruitment' part of the site - every member can play a part in recruiting their colleagues. If you're a rep, the website should recognise this when you log in, and will display the word 'representative' in the login status box. If you're a rep but you don't see this, your branch may not have notified our membership department that you're a rep - ask them to contact the membership department as soon as possible. Your rep status needs to be logged on your membership record - as well as controlling your level of access to the website, it ensures you receive key correspondence such as our reps' magazine, Report. Back to contents Problems registering to use the members-only area? There are two stages to the registration system.
Stage 1: you need to enter your surname, membership number and home postcode. The website will look for a match for all three fields on our membership database. If you get taken straight back to the registration screen, please check your browser preferences to make sure that cookies are enabled. Our site uses a temporary cookie which remembers your progress through the registration and login systems.
If you receive an error message saying your record could not be found, please try again, making sure you enter all the details correctly. If there is still no match, have you moved house recently and not informed us? If so, try entering your old postcode. The details you enter need to match those on your Prospect membership record. If you can't get beyond the first stage of the registration process and have checked that cookies are enabled in your browser preferences, please email webmaster@prospect.org.uk quoting your name, membership number and home postcode.
Stage 2: if the website successfully matches the three fields you will be taken to a second screen. This asks you to set up a personal password, which you will use to log in on future visits to the site, plus a security question and answer. Back to contents Already registered but forgotten your password? There is a password reminder system on the member login page. You can either choose to have your password emailed to you or to be asked your security question on-screen. Back to contents Problems with the password reminder system? If you select the option to have your password emailed to you but nothing arrives, check all your various mailboxes. The password will be sent to whichever address you nominated as your 'preferred' address when you first registered. If this doesn't solve the problem, the email address on our records may be invalid, so you should select the option to be asked your security question on-screen. If the security question and answer system doesn't work, check that you are submitting your answer in the exact format you used when you first registered. This is particularly important if the answer to your password question is a date. The website will not recognise the date itself, simply the string of characters. So if you originally recorded the answer as '28 February 2001', but enter 28/02/2001 in response to the reminder question, the website will not accept this. When you first register we encourage you to use the format dd/mm/yyyy, and we provide a note to this effect on the reminder page. If you are absolutely sure that you're entering the correct answer to your security question but it's not being recognised, check that cookies are enabled in your browser preferences. When the system reveals your password on screen it will automatically log you into the site. It can't do this if you have cookies disabled (see below). Back to contents Already registered and can remember your password but are unable to log in? Check that cookies are enabled in your browser preferences. Our site uses a temporary cookie - this simply remembers that you've logged in, enabling you to move between members-only and public pages then back again without being challenged to log in for a second time. Back to contents Accessibility issues Our site uses cascading style sheets. Users can override the style sheets by changing their browser preferences. All our text is scaleable, so users can increase or decrease the size to suit themselves. All our new and recent pages should comply with the Website Accessibility Initiative's Priority Level 1, and we are working towards Priority Level 2. But we are still working through our older content to correct a number of outstanding issues. Please email the website team if you have any accessibility problems with our site. Back to contents Downloading files from our document library Our document library contains a range of files in either PDF or Microsoft Word format. Some are restricted to members only, other to reps only. In our websites document library you can find a wide range of downloadable files in PDF (portable document format) or Microsoft Word. PDF files: You will need Adobe Reader software to view these files. Adobe Reader is free it comes with most web browsers, and can also be downloaded from the Adobe website (www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readstep.html). If you click on a link to a PDF file in our document library, the document will open automatically in a new browser window. You can then save the file by clicking on the save a copy button on the Acrobat Reader toolbar. If you dont want to open the file you can save it to disk immediately, by right-clicking on its link in the document library and choosing the save option. Word files: If you do not have a recent version of Microsoft Word but are running Windows, you can use Microsoft's 'Word viewer ' which enables your web browser to display the documents. Or you can install Open Office, a free productivity suite for Linux, Mac, Solaris and Windows. Many of the files can also be viewed in html format - you will be given a choice as part of the download process. Back to contents Finding what youre looking for in our document library Our document library is organised into a number of categories. These are a mix of subject areas (eg health and safety) and document types (eg members guides). Where there is some overlap between these categories we will make documents available in both. So our members guide to parental and family leave can be found in both the members guides and the equal opportunities categories. Back to contents Data protection Prospect's data protection notice sets out the terms on which we hold and process members' data. Back to contents
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