When someone signs up on your Portal, Rhythm uses their email domain to match them to the right organization, then shows a profile form. These account-wide settings control both parts of that process: whether Rhythm matches or creates organizations automatically, which profile forms new and returning members see, which fields lock after the first save, and where first-time members go after they complete their profile.
Prerequisites
- You need access to your account's Settings and to Contacts setup for the profile-form choices.
- You need at least one active contact web form for each profile form you want to use.
Control Organization Matching and Creation at Sign-Up
Go to Rolodex (CRM) › Setup › Settings. Near the top of the page, you will see these settings:
| Setting | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Disable automatic matching of organizations during portal signup | Off | When this is on, Rhythm does not use email domains to place a new sign-up in an organization, even when the domain matches. |
| Disable automatic creation of organizations during portal signup | Off | When this is on, Rhythm leaves a sign-up without an organization when the email domain does not match an existing organization. Rhythm does not create a new organization automatically. |
Tip
Disable automatic matching of organizations during portal signup is a Rolodex-level switch. When it is on, the Portal sign-up flow skips domain-based organization linking entirely, and this setting takes precedence over any Auth0 or sign-up form-level domain-matching configuration you also use.
With both switches off, Rhythm checks the domains in the new contact’s email addresses. It ignores common public email providers, such as consumer webmail services, and then follows this process:
- If an organization in your account already claims one of those domains, Rhythm places the new contact in that organization.
- If no organization claims any of those domains, Rhythm can create a new organization automatically, use public company information found for the domain, and place the new contact in it as the first contact.
This domain check happens during authentication, before Rhythm shows the sign-up any profile form. Because Rhythm has already decided whether to match the contact, a form-level setting cannot delay or override that decision. If you need contacts to stay unlinked until later in your process, turn matching off here instead of trying to control it from the form. This is especially useful if your association reviews or approves organization affiliation manually. With matching off, new sign-ups are created unplaced, so staff can review and link them deliberately instead of letting Rhythm do it automatically by domain.
Warning
If you turn matching off, automatic organization creation will not run, because Rhythm only tries to create an organization after matching finds nothing. If you want Rhythm to create organizations for unmatched domains, matching must stay on.
A sign-up placed in a newly created organization becomes that organization’s first, and possibly only, contact. They may also receive any contact roles your account’s automatic-role rules give to a first contact, including an administrative role with full Portal permissions for that organization. If you do not want self-service sign-ups to create organizations without review, turn organization creation off and review unplaced sign-ups yourself.
An organization's Domain and Alternate Domain fields support only this sign-up match. They do not enforce or restrict who can join or be linked to the organization elsewhere in Rhythm. Setting a domain on an organization does not require every contact who joins it to use that email domain.
Tip
If a new sign-up seems to have created a duplicate organization for a domain that should already have matched, check for an existing duplicate organization record first. Matching did not necessarily fail. Delete or merge the unintended duplicate so it is not accidentally selected during a future sign-up.
Sign-Up Form Components That Also Control This
The account-wide settings above are not the only controls for organization matching and creation. The sign-up form can also affect this behavior through two components on the form:
- The Contact Social Lookup component can turn off organization matching, organization auto-creation, or both for that form. If the account-wide matching switch is on, the Portal sign-up flow still skips domain-based organization linking entirely.
- The Contact Work Info component controls whether the form requires someone to enter an organization. An organization is mandatory only when this component is on the form and its Require organization? option is selected. This component also has a setting that stops it from creating or linking a new organization record. When that setting is on, a portal user can type an organization name that appears on the contact in bold with no hyperlink. No organization record is created or linked in the console, even if you search for it directly. Turn that setting off to let the organization be created and linked normally.
- The Contact Work Info component controls whether the form offers an Add New Organization choice. Disable automatic creation of organizations during portal signup only stops Rhythm from creating an organization automatically when no domain match is found; it does not remove the form's own option to add a new organization.
Warning
If a contact form uses a hook or expression to control whether an address is linked to the organization, test this scenario directly on your form before relying on it. For example, a hook that keeps that checkbox cleared when there is no organization has been reported not to always take effect after a Portal sign-up creates a contact with no associated organization.
Choose the Portal Profile Forms
To open the Configure Default Contact Forms dialog, go to Rolodex (CRM) › Setup › Contacts › Forms, then select Configure Defaults. The Portal card includes these settings, in addition to the organization-contact forms covered in Configure What Portal Members May Do for Their Organization:
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| When a contact first enters the portal: | Rhythm shows this form to a member who has not completed a profile update before. If you leave it blank, Rhythm uses the returning-member form below instead. |
| When a contact is updating their contact profile: | Rhythm shows this form to every returning member. It also uses this form for a first-time member when no new-user form is set. |
| Do not allow contacts to change their name in the portal | After a member completes one profile update, their name fields become read-only on the Portal. A first-time member can still fill in their name. |
| Do not allow contacts to change their credentials in the portal (but new contacts can provide credentials) | After a member completes one profile update, their credentials field, such as post-nominal letters, becomes read-only on the Portal. A first-time member can still provide credentials. |
All six pickers on this dialog are required together, including the two organization-contact forms. You cannot save only the Portal profile choices without also choosing Console create and edit forms.
If you also restrict organization name changes, see Organization Forms and the 360 Screen. That lock works the same way: an existing organization’s name becomes read-only on the Portal, but a brand-new organization can still be named when it is created.
You cannot turn off the profile-update prompt for a new Portal user's first login. You can only choose which form it shows, including falling back to the returning-member form. If a returning member says their name fields are greyed out and they cannot explain why, check whether Do not allow contacts to change their name in the portal is on before treating it as a defect. That setting, not a bug, is the most common cause.
You cannot add the actual profile-image upload control to a form through a field group. It is available only through the Contact Social Lookup component. If you need to require an email address before someone can save a form that uses that component, add a required email field alongside it instead of relying on the component alone.
Tip
If your account uses an Application Organization Form with a validation that blocks an organization from applying before it has enough students enrolled, set that validation to trigger only when enrollment is below the required minimum, for example less than 1, not when enrollment already meets it. To turn the check off entirely, edit the Application Organization Form and remove that validation.
Send First-Time Members Somewhere After Their First Save
Still on Rolodex (CRM) › Setup › Settings, tick After a contact creates a new profile in the portal, send them to a specific route, then fill in Specify the Route:. For example, you could enter /membership/signup.
When a member saves their profile for the first time, Rhythm sends them to this route if the page they are on does not already have a more specific destination in progress. This route is usually a membership application or another next step you want new members to reach. The setting does not affect returning members when they save their profile.
This redirect runs only after a contact profile is created on its own. It does not apply when contact and organization profiles are created together in the same sign-up flow. You can find valid page routes to enter here in the Portals & Microsites application. The route is also a single account-wide default, not a per-page or per-event setting. It sends every first-time save to the same destination, regardless of which page or event the member originally came from.
Warning
Unticking this checkbox does not remove the saved route. The box hides, but the route stays in effect, and the checkbox will be ticked again the next time you open this page. To clear a saved route from this page, leave the box ticked, replace the text with nothing or spaces, and save. There is no on-page confirmation that this worked, so reopen the page to check.
Dependencies and Precedence
- Organization matching must succeed, or be skipped, before creation is ever considered. See the warning above.
- The Portal profile-form choices here can be overridden per page by a Portal page designer, who may pin a specific form to one page instead of using these account defaults.
- Name and credentials locks depend on the contact already having completed one profile update. A contact created directly by staff, with no Portal update yet, is treated as first-time on the Portal even if their record already has other data.
- A member's own request to associate themselves with an organization can be refused separately from the form settings above. Staff have seen this authorization check reject a member's organization change when the member's current signed-in identity is not already related to that organization or one of its children, even though the form itself would otherwise allow it. A staff member editing the same record from the Console can still succeed because Console access carries broader administrative rights. If a member gets an access-denied error while trying to associate themselves with an organization they should be able to join, treat it as this authorization behavior rather than a sign that the form is misconfigured, and contact Support if it blocks a member who should be allowed.
Permissions
To change the sign-up matching and creation switches, or the new-contact redirect route, you need access to your account’s Settings. To change the Portal profile forms and the two field locks, you need access to Contacts setup, specifically Forms.
Validation and Errors
The redirect route text box is required only while its checkbox is ticked. If you leave it blank with the box ticked, saving fails with a message that names the field. Rhythm does not check whether the route is in a valid format, so any text is accepted and typos are not caught. A failed save of the settings page uses the same success-sounding message as a successful save. If a change does not seem to take effect, reload the page and confirm that the setting saved before assuming something else is wrong.