Using a single login with multiple users

[SteveCline]

I teach High School GIS and we also have an institutional account with AGOL.  It was suggested to me recently that, instead of creating an account for every student I should just create one account for all students in each section of the class.  The advantage would be that I do not have to manage multiple institutional accounts.  As of right now, the way we receive the account is through a grant which allocates them as 100 users per institutional account.  Therefore, if I exceed 100 I have to maintain them on more than one account.  There is no problem getting more slots but it gets cumbersome when structured this way.  We will also be expanding our user pool to include some science students as well so our numbers will increase even more.

Are there any usability issues with the idea of giving all users in a class the same login and password?

Thanks - Steve Cline

[TimWitt]

If this is a paid Organizational account I think you would run into legal issues. I think each account needs to have a named person that is only allowed to use said account. I would contact your ESRI rep to see what way you should go.

[MichaelThompson2]

Using a single login for multiple users is typically a bad idea. Anyone sharing a login has access to the maps and apps created by all other users sharing the login. Files will magically get deleted or modified and accountability is almost impossible without unique users.

If you're data is worth securing it is best to secure it the right way and give everyone their own login. The headaches created by sharing logins are usually worse (many times much worse) that the drudgery of maintaining individual user accounts.