Northeastern is modernizing and streamlining the enterprise system and processes that power university accounts and access management. This effort will reduce risks associated with older systems that have reached end-of-life and end-of-support through the retirement of the legacy Waveset system and a transition to more modern, cloud-based systems.

Management of faculty, staff, and sponsored accounts is moving into Saviynt, the same system that has been managing students, alumni, and family accounts since 2020. While the most significant changes are occurring to the ITS-administered backend, the most visible impact of this project for the wider university community is how accounts are claimed and activated. Password management and some service access requests will also change as a result of the Waveset retirement.  

In addition to moving away from an older system that has reached end-of-support, the move to Saviynt will consolidate the management of all accounts into one system, simplify the claiming of new accounts, and improve the security posture of Northeastern’s account management. This is expected to provide more consistency across all account types for the account holders and for the teams supporting the technology.  

All employee accounts that are managed in Waveset are moving to Saviynt. This includes all faculty, staff, temporary employees, and sponsored accounts. All other accounts (students, alumni, families) are already managed by Saviynt and aren’t changing.  

Waveset is scheduled to be retired the weekend of May 10-12, 2024. 

Learn more about this change and what to expect by reading these FAQs and referring to accounts.northeastern.edu.

All Northeastern account onboarding across the global university system is centralized at accounts.northeastern.edu. If involved in welcoming new hires at Northeastern, review any of your onboarding processes and materials and update to point back to this site. Questions can be directed to the IT Service Desk.

All new faculty, staff, and sponsored accounts will receive an automated email as soon as it’s time to claim. This email will have a unique token URL for each account that, when visited, will walk the employee through the process, including enrollment in two-factor authentication. Employees will no longer need to enter any personally identifiable information (PII), such as date of birth or postcode, to verify their identity as part of the claim process. With the new system, the unique token provided by email will be how employees verify their identity when they claim their accounts rather than by entering PII.

Every new employee who is eligible for a Northeastern account will receive an email to claim their account once it’s ready. Managers and HR staff can refer new hires directly to the claim email or to accounts.northeastern.edu.  

New accounts are available depending on the type of employee. This isn’t changing from the current state.

All faculty (full-time and part-time): up to 90 days prior to start date

Full-time staff: up to five days prior to start date

Part-time staff and temp non-students: on start date

Northeastern-London faculty and staff: on start date in PeopleHR

Sponsored accounts: on start date provided in account request

The unique links in the claim emails will expire after 30 days. After 30 days, please contact the IT Service Desk.

Once accounts are claimed, it may take a couple of hours for those accounts to sync before they can be used to access Northeastern services such as email, the Employee Hub, Microsoft 365, and Workday. If the accounts don’t work immediately, try again in 1-2 hours.

There may be resources that require additional requests to access, such as to specific Teams channels, or SharePoint sites, as those are managed by individual site and service owners.

Visit the Connect to Tech website for more information about the key resources and technology available to Northeastern employees.

Employee accounts are expected to transfer seamlessly to the new system. This transition shouldn’t impact employees’ day-to-day or how they access sites and services with their accounts.

No, neither passwords nor password requirements are changing.

If you’ve forgotten your password or need to change it, visit accounts.northeastern.edu to manage your password. Authentication questions are no longer needed to reset passwords. You’ll receive an email with a unique link instead to verify your identity.  

Service requests previously accessed through Waveset are moving to the Tech Service Catalog, under Accounts and Access.

Grouper is replacing Waveset as the new solution for access group management. Service owners should transition to Grouper to continue managing their access groups. Training and resources are available at grouper.northeastern.edu.

Please reach out to IT Services with any questions or issues, 24/7. Contact ITS.