The first time you sign in to a portal, Rhythm knows only about your sign-in. Before it opens a page tied to your records, it asks you to confirm or complete your contact details.
Why You Are Asked
The portal sends you to the contact page when you are signed in, connected to an active member record, your email address is verified, and you have not completed this contact step on this portal before. If you already have a contact in Rhythm, or sign-up creates a new record for you, you may see different setup screens along the way. This usually happens once. After your profile is recorded as complete, the portal does not send you back to this step on later sign-ins.
There is no setting that makes you review or update your profile again after a certain amount of time, and your association cannot require that for everyone with a flag. If your association wants you to refresh your details periodically, they will usually ask through a homepage notice or an email campaign instead of this sign-in step.
Prerequisites
- You need to be signed in and connected to an active member record. If you are not connected to a record yet, the portal sends you to sign up first; see Sign In and Open a Page That Shows Your Records.
- Your email address needs to be verified. If it is not verified yet, the portal sends you to verify it first; see Verify Your Email Address to Continue.
The first time you sign in to a portal, Rhythm does not know much about you beyond your sign-in. Before it shows a page tied to your records, it asks you to confirm or complete your contact details.
Why You Are Asked
The portal sends you to the contact page when you are signed in, connected to an active member record, your email address is verified, and you have not completed this contact step on this portal before. This normally happens only once. After your profile is recorded as complete, the portal does not send you back to this step on later sign-ins.
Prerequisites
You need to already be signed in and connected to an active member record. If you are not connected to a record yet, you are sent to sign up first instead; see Sign In and Open a Page That Shows Your Records.
Your email needs to already be verified. If it is not, you are sent to verify it first; see Verify Your Email Address to Continue.
Until you finish this step, Rhythm may have created a record for you with only your name on it. Your primary email is not linked to your profile until you submit the contact page, so a partial record can stay blank if you leave before finishing.
Tip
The portal’s profile-completion form can require more information than staff must enter in the Console. For example, staff are not required to fill in a primary or home address when editing your profile from the Console, but the portal form can still require one from you.
Completing Your Contact
Administrators set up this page by creating a dedicated contact-update page in the member portal and connecting it to the form you should complete. Your association chooses the exact fields you see; Rhythm does not use one fixed form for everyone. If you reach this step from an event microsite, that microsite needs its own contact-management pages for registration to work smoothly, and most microsites have them.
When prompted, review and complete the fields on the contact page your association has set up.
When prompted, review and complete the fields on the contact page the association has set up.
Submit the page to finish.
Your email address appears on this page only after you have confirmed it. When you submit the page, Rhythm saves your information, including your email, to your account. A few field behaviors are easy to miss:
- An organization may already be suggested for you. You can usually clear it and continue without choosing one, unless a specific work-information field on the form requires it.
- If your email address’s domain matches an organization already in Rhythm, your new contact is designed to link to that organization automatically, and you see a confirmation when it does.
- Your Contact Role does not normally appear here. Your association needs to add it to the form before you can see it, and the portal still does not let you change your own role directly.
- If you enter a middle name, the portal’s built-in Middle Name field shortens it to an abbreviation, so the full name you typed does not display there.
- Email is usually not required on this page, so you can finish setup without an email ever being added to your account.
- Your name fields may not be editable if your association has turned off name changes in the portal.
- An address section can be required as a whole, but a specific part of it, such as country, usually cannot be required by itself. The portal also cannot require one address only when another is left blank. If your association needs a country, they may require the whole address or add instructions asking you to enter one.
- If choosing your organization’s main address causes an error while you complete this page, try entering the address directly instead.
- Some profile options, such as an affiliation field, appear only after your association has fully set up that part of the contact form. If an option you expect is missing, check with the association before assuming it is unavailable to everyone.
- You can add or change your profile photo here only if your association has included that option on the form. When it is offered, it appears alongside your other contact information rather than as a separate photo field.
You may see this same contact page again when you register for an event. When that happens, the page is prefilled with the information already on your record, including any communication preferences, and you can change your choices there.
If your profile includes an option to link your work address to an organization’s address, the organization’s address appears in your profile once it is linked. When you add a new organization from this page, that link option can become checked automatically. Checking it does not fill in a required work address if the new organization does not have an address entered yet, so confirm that an address is on file for the organization instead of assuming the checkbox satisfies the requirement.
Result
After your contact is marked as complete, the portal sends you back to the page that started this step. For example, if you began from a specific page on an event microsite using "Set up an account," you return to that same page after verifying your email and finishing your contact details. If nothing specific started the process, such as when you go directly to create a contact, you land on your account home page instead.
Finishing this step does not send a separate welcome email. The only setup messages are the sign-in and verification messages described above and in Verify Your Email Address to Continue.
While you are on this contact page, or on the related email verification page, the portal does not send you back to the same step again. It waits because your profile is not marked complete yet, and sending you back again could trap you in a loop between the two pages.
The "Illegal Redirect URL" Message
In some cases, the portal rejects the destination it is trying to send you to after you finish because of how that destination is written. You may see a message about an "Illegal redirect URL." What happens next is not established, but the message usually means the intended destination could not be used, not that something is wrong with your contact information. If you see this message, navigate directly to the page you wanted instead of relying on the automatic redirect.
Once your contact is marked as complete, the portal sends you wherever you originally intended to go. For example, if this step interrupted you after you tried to open a specific page, the portal sends you back to that page. :::
While you are on this contact page, or on the related email-verification page, the portal does not send you back to this same step again, even though your profile is not yet marked complete. Otherwise, you could be caught in a loop between the two pages.
The "Illegal Redirect URL" Message
In some cases, the portal rejects the destination it is trying to send you to after you finish because of how the destination is written. If you see a message about an "Illegal redirect URL," what happens afterward is not established. The message typically means the intended destination could not be used, rather than that something is wrong with your contact information. If you run into this, navigate directly to the page you wanted instead of relying on the automatic redirect.
If You Need to Change Your Email Address or Created the Wrong Account
If you already have a contact record and get an error using Set Up Account, use Forgot Password instead. This usually means a portal account already exists for you.
If you create a new account by mistake, or sign up while you are already connected to an existing Rhythm record, the setup flow can offer to merge the new account with that existing profile. Choose that option so your organization keeps its prior history under one contact. If you already finished without merging, create another new account and merge it with the correct profile.
If you move to a new email address, updating your contact record with the new address is not enough to sign in with it. Create a new portal account using the new email. When the portal looks for a matching contact, select your existing record from the matches shown by name. If both a primary and a secondary email were on file, both appear under the same contact so you can still find yourself. Linking the new account to that record keeps your history together instead of creating a duplicate.
If your association needs to clean up a conflicting identity for you, you can sign up again afterward using your correct email address. Signing in with email and password, rather than another method, is the most reliable way to connect to your record the first time.
If you are setting up an account for an existing contact, you may be asked to verify your identity a second way through an identity provider. Choose a method such as text, call, or email, then enter the code you receive to continue.
Warning
Try to finish creating your account in one sitting. Starting the process and coming back later has been linked to sign-up errors. If you cannot finish now, it is safer to start over later than to resume partway through.
If Something Goes Wrong
| What you see | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
| You are asked to complete your contact details every time you sign in | Your profile may not be saving as complete. Contact the association if this keeps happening |
| You see an "Illegal redirect URL" message after finishing | The portal could not use the destination it was trying to send you to. Navigate directly to the page you wanted |
| You do not land where you expected after finishing | Try navigating directly to your original destination. The automatic redirect does not always succeed |
| You see a blank white screen while signing up or registering | The page that collects contact details may not have published correctly, even if it looks active in the Console. Contact the association so they can check and republish it |
| You used the browser's back button during sign-up and now see an unexpected error | Avoid going back during sign-up. Navigate directly to the portal and start again instead |
| Saving a profile update fails with an access-denied style error | The form configuration can cause this. Contact the association |
| You cannot save a profile update that includes a combined-looking option in a list, such as a multi-select field | Try saving again without selecting that specific option |