Trouble Logging in? Here are some tips.

Everyone has been there. Your user needs to reset their password, is having trouble logging in, doesn’t have permissions to see certain things, etc. We get it. That’s why we put together this list of common items, so you and your fellow Salesforce users can focus on the large tasks at hand.

Is the user using the correct login URL and username?

• Sandbox v. Prod. Is the user attempting to log in to Production with a sandbox username? Or vice versa? If you check the user record and there are no failed login attempts in their login history, you know they are not using the correct URL/username combination
• Most orgs use a company email for their user’s usernames, but yours may use a different format. Ensure they are using the appropriate username. If this is a sandbox and the user is not familiar with logging in to a sandbox, ensure they know there is a suffix (usually “.[env_name]” format) and their username will not match their production username
• Explain custom domains (My Domain). Some orgs restrict logins to the My Domain URL, preventing users from logging in to the standard https://login.salesforce.com and https://test.salesforce.com URLs.
• Some users will bookmark a URL with a hard-coded instance. If your environment moves to another instance, they will not be able to log in via this URL (common scenario is a sandbox is refreshed and the new version is hosted on another instance). Direct users to My Domain URL, login.salesforce.com or test.salesforce.com depending on your situation. Ref: https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=000335670&language=en_US&type=1&mode=1

Different ways for resetting passwords

• User initiated password reset — Forgot your password? link on login screen; user will get an email with link to reset their password, prompted for security question. Link will expire in 24 hours so make sure the user knows this is time sensitive and not to put off completing this step. Will not work if user does not know the answer to their security question.
• Admin initiated password reset
• Reset Password button
• Generate new password and notify user checkbox on user page (visible in edit mode only) — use this if user did not set up a security question — this will prompt the user to set up security questions
• Both of the above will email the user with a link to reset their password (and possibly set up security question if they have not done so yet). Both of these methods will also bypass security question step. If the user doesn’t remember the answer to their security question, they can change it after logging in by navigating to “My Settings”

Did the user set up a security question?

There are different ways of creating users which affect whether or not the user will be prompted to set up their password and security question:

• Manually creating a user. Generate new password and notify user checkbox checked by default — will send user a welcome email (Subject: ‘Welcome to Salesforce: Verify Your Account’) prompting them to set up their password and security questions
• Data Loader — If you insert users with a csv using Data Loader, the user will not be prompted to set up their password. There is no way to check the ‘generate new password’ checkbox via the API to prompt user to set up their password. Admin must reset their password in order for them to set up their password.
• SSO — user does not set up password or security question. If the user needs a password to connect via some other app or integration, admin will have to initiate a password reset.

Does the user have a valid email?

• If you are in a sandbox, this can be a common issue as when you refresh a sandbox, all emails are appended with a suffix. An admin will have to update the user’s email. If you check the ‘generate a new password’ checkbox, the user will not have to confirm the email change and you skip a step when helping them reset their password.
• If not in a sandbox, it’s still possible there was a typo somewhere along the line. Or perhaps the user’s email changed due to a name or org change.

Email deliverability turned on?

• Another scenario in sandboxes is when an admin is initiating a password reset but a user never receives an email. Check that Email Deliverability is not set to “No Access”. When sandboxes are first created or refreshed, this setting defaults to System Only which will support password reset emails. However, some orgs may change this to No Access which will block password reset emails from going out.

User frozen?

• If an admin attempts to reset the user’s password and they get an “invalid username or password — check with your admin” [check for exact error message; add screenshot] error when they click the confirmation link in their email, the user could be frozen. Hit Unfreeze button on the User record if user should in fact be allowed to log in.

Could it be due to password policies?

• Max login attempts will cause user to be locked out. When admin initiates a password reset for user, it will automatically unlock them. If the user does not want to change their password, you can hit the unlock user button on the user page and give them more attempts to log in with the correct password and security question.

Do you use SAML in your org?

• Check Federation ID — this is unique key to issuer. If you know the format for this (oftentimes user’s email), you can check for typos or other format issues with the value in this field.

Browser blocking cookies?

• Check browser settings and ensure it’s not blocking cookies for Salesforce
• If all looks good, you can always try clearing your cache and restarting your browser (and computer) [insert did you turn it on and off again meme here]

User Active?

• This may seem obvious, but sometimes we forget to check the obvious things when we get deep in the weeds.

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