Getting Started Signing in, your profile, and finding your way around NSCAT. Signing In & Your Profile Overview — Getting Into NSCAT Your NSCAT account is created for you by an administrator — there is no self-service sign-up. Once it exists, you sign in with your work email and a password. GOOD TO KNOW  Your email address is your username. It is also where password-reset mail goes, so it needs to be an address you can actually read. Signing In Go to the NSCAT address for your organization and enter your Email and Password, then click Sign in. On success you land on the dashboard with your activities listed down the left. HEADS UP  If your credentials are correct but sign-in still fails, your account may have been disabled by an administrator. A disabled account cannot sign in at all — that is an administrator request, not something a password reset will fix.   GOOD TO KNOW  If sign-in is failing for everyone at once, and pages that normally load are hanging, that is an infrastructure problem rather than an account one. Report it rather than resetting passwords; your administrator has a specific check for it. Forgotten Password Click the forgotten-password link on the sign-in screen to reach Reset Your Password. Enter your email address and submit. NSCAT sends you instructions to reset your password, and the screen confirms it has been sent. Use Return to sign in to go back. PRO TIP  This is the quickest route back in, and it does not involve anyone else. Use it in preference to asking an administrator to set a password for you.   GOOD TO KNOW  The reset link arrives by email and is single-use. If it has expired by the time you open it, simply request another.   HEADS UP  If no email arrives, check that the address on your account is right — an administrator can confirm it. NSCAT can only send to the address it holds, and a typo in it passes validation without complaint. Changing Your Password Open Profile from the sidebar. Your Email is shown but cannot be edited. Field What to enter Old Password Your current password. New Password The new one — see the rules below. Confirm New Password The new one again, exactly. Click Change Password to save. GOOD TO KNOW  Your email cannot be changed from Profile. If it needs correcting, an administrator does it in Manage User. Password Rules A password must have all of the following: ·        At least 6 characters ·        At least one uppercase letter ·        At least one lowercase letter ·        At least one number ·        At least one special character from @ $ ! % * ? & HEADS UP  Only @ $ ! % * ? & are accepted, and no other symbol is allowed anywhere in the password. A password containing #, -, _, ., +, or / is rejected even if it also has a valid special character. This is by far the most common reason a strong-looking password will not save.   GOOD TO KNOW  Confirm New Password must match exactly. A mismatch is reported separately from the rules above, so a perfectly valid password can still be refused on the confirm field alone — watch for a trailing space.   GOOD TO KNOW  Your NSCAT password does not expire. You will never be forced to change it on a schedule. If someone mentions an expiring password in connection with an outage, they mean a database service account, not yours. When You Were Given a Starting Password If an administrator created your account with a temporary password, change it as soon as you sign in. PRO TIP  Change it from Profile on your first sign-in, or use the forgotten-password link to set your own. Either way, nobody but you should know your working password. Session Expiry Your session lasts a fixed period. NSCAT warns you before it ends, at 30 minutes, 5 minutes, and 1 minute remaining: You are about to be Logged Out — Your session is about to expire in 30 minutes. Click on 'Re-Login' to stay logged in… Ensure that you save your work in advance. Click Re-Login, enter your password, and you carry on where you were. HEADS UP  The prompt does not discard your work, but an expired session does — on pages that do not autosave. Treat the 30-minute warning as your cue to save on the survey composer, survey response coding, and lessons learned. See Autosave & Drafts for which pages protect you and which do not.   GOOD TO KNOW  Sign out deliberately with Logout in the sidebar when you are finished, particularly on a shared machine. Common Problems What you see What it means Correct credentials but sign-in fails Your account may be disabled. Ask an administrator. Sign-in fails for everyone at once Infrastructure, not your account. Report it. No reset email arrives Check the address held on your account is correct. Reset link no longer works It has been used or has expired. Request another. New password rejected Remove any symbol outside @ $ ! % * ? &. "Passwords do not match" Retype both fields; check for a trailing space. Email field greyed out on Profile Correct — only an administrator can change it. A menu you expect is missing Roles are read from your session. Sign out and back in. Signed out mid-edit The session expired. Check for a draft banner when you return — see Autosave & Drafts. Autosave & Drafts Overview — What Saves Itself and What Does Not Several pages in NSCAT now save your work as you go. About two seconds after you stop typing, whatever you have entered is sent to the server without you clicking anything. A small chip beside the page title tells you where things stand. This does not replace the save button. It means that if your session expires, your laptop sleeps, or the network drops, you are very unlikely to lose more than the last few seconds of work. Which pages autosave Page Autosaves Interview Composer Yes Interview Response Yes Focus Group Response Yes Observations Yes Recommendations Yes Survey (the respondent's own view) Yes Survey Composer No Survey Responses (comment coding) No Lessons Learned No Reports and exports Nothing to save   HEADS UP  The three pages in bold are the ones to watch. Comment coding in particular is slow, absorbing work that people routinely do for an hour at a stretch — and it does not autosave. Save each page of comments as you finish it.   GOOD TO KNOW  Autosave does not run on a locked activity, or where you have read access without write. If the chip is missing on a page that should have it, that is why. Reading the status chip Chip Colour What it means Saved Green Everything is on the server. Hover for Last saved N ago. Saving… Blue A save is in flight. It lasts a moment. Offline Orange Your browser is offline, or the network failed. Your changes are held locally and will be sent when the connection returns. Save failed Red The save was rejected. Your changes are not on the server. Hovering the chip shows when the last successful save happened — Last saved 12s ago, Last saved 3m ago — or No saves yet this session if nothing has been saved yet. PRO TIP  Glance at the chip before you leave a page. Green means you can close the tab safely. Orange or red means stop and read the next two sections. When it says Offline Your changes are kept in your browser and queued. When the connection comes back, NSCAT sends them automatically and the chip returns to Saved. HEADS UP  Keep the tab open. The queue lives in the browser page — closing the tab while the chip is orange throws away whatever was waiting to be sent.   GOOD TO KNOW  NSCAT makes a few attempts to send the queued work once you are back online, a second apart. If they all fail, the chip turns red and the queue is cleared. At that point your work is still in the local draft (below), but it is not on the server. When it says Save failed This means the server refused the save rather than the network failing. The usual causes: Cause What to do You have read access but not write Nothing you can fix — ask a Team Lead The activity was locked while you were working Ask an administrator to unlock it A required field is empty or invalid Fix it; the chip clears on the next successful save The whole application is failing for everyone Report it — this is infrastructure   HEADS UP  A red chip means your recent typing is not saved. Do not close the tab. Fix whatever is wrong and make a small edit to trigger another save, or copy your text somewhere safe before you leave the page. Draft recovery While a save is pending, NSCAT also keeps a copy in your browser. If you return to a page and that copy is still there — because the save never completed — a banner appears at the top: Draft found from 18 August 2026, 14:12. [ Restore ] [ Discard ] ·        Restore puts the draft's contents back into the form. ·        Discard throws it away and keeps what is on the server. PRO TIP  Restore first, then read what you get. If the draft turns out to be older or thinner than what is on the server, you have lost nothing — nothing is committed until you save. Retyping before you have looked is how people lose work they still had.   HEADS UP  The draft lives in the browser you were using, on the machine you were using. A draft taken on your laptop will not appear when you sign in from a different computer.   GOOD TO KNOW  Once a save succeeds, the local draft is cleared. A draft banner appearing means a save genuinely did not complete — it is not a routine prompt. Autosave and the session expiry warning The two are related but not the same thing. Autosave protects the content of the page you are on. The session warning is about your sign-in. PRO TIP  When the 30-minute prompt appears, glance at the chip. Green means you can re-login without hurrying. Orange or red means deal with the save first — re-logging in will not rescue work that never reached the server. A Practical Approach ·        Watch the chip, not the clock. Green is the only state that means your work is safe. ·        Still press Save at natural break points. It costs nothing and it gives you a definite point to come back to. ·        Never close a tab on an orange or red chip. ·        Restore drafts before retyping. ·        On the three pages that do not autosave, save per page — especially comment coding. Common Problems What you see What it means No chip on a page that should have one The activity is locked, or you have read-only access. Chip stuck on Saving… A slow connection. Wait; it will resolve to Saved or Offline. Chip Offline but your internet works The server is unreachable. Keep the tab open. Chip Save failed on one page only Usually a permission problem or an invalid field. Chip Save failed everywhere, for everyone Infrastructure. Report it. A draft banner you did not expect A previous save did not complete. Restore and check. No draft banner after losing work The draft was on a different browser or machine, or the save had actually succeeded. Draft banner keeps coming back You dismissed it without discarding. Use Discard to clear it. The Dashboard Overview — Finding Your Way Around Everything in NSCAT is reached from the left sidebar. It lists the activities you have access to, and expanding one reveals everything inside it. There is no separate "home" screen to learn — the sidebar is the navigation. GOOD TO KNOW  Fixed in PROD Round 1. The sidebar used to disappear intermittently while navigating. It no longer does. If a menu is missing now, it is an access or session matter — see the table at the end of this page. The Activities List Expand Activities to see the activities you are assigned to. A Search activity box appears above the list once you have any, filtering by title as you type. What you see What it means The activity title Click to expand. A lock icon beside the title The activity is locked and read-only. Access Restricted You are not assigned to this activity. Progress bars in place of the menu The activity's details are still loading.   PRO TIP  Use Search activity rather than scrolling. Assessment titles tend to be long and similar — typing a year or a site name finds the right one immediately. What Sits Inside an Activity Each activity expands into up to six groups. You only see the ones you have read access to. Survey Item What it does Needs Create Survey Starts the activity's survey, if it has none yet. Survey write Composer Builds and edits the survey. Survey read Responses Views and edits collected responses. Survey read Download Doc Format Downloads the survey as a document for printing. Survey read Upload Master Copy Uploads the master hard copy back to NSCAT. Survey write Upload Survey Response Uploads a completed paper response. Survey write   GOOD TO KNOW  Create Survey is greyed out without survey write access, and disappears as an option once a survey exists — an activity holds only one. Interviews and Focus Groups Item What it does New Interview / New Focus Group Creates another one. Needs write access. Search box Filters the list by title. Composer Builds the question set. Response Opens the recorded response. Submit Response Records a response. Only appears before a response exists.   HEADS UP  Submit Response vanishes once a response has been recorded — replaced in effect by Response. If you are hunting for Submit Response and cannot find it, the response already exists.   PRO TIP  Interviews and focus groups each have their own search box, and interviews can be sorted alphabetically. On an activity with twenty interviews that is much faster than reading down the list. Recommendations New Recommendation creates one (write access required), and a search box filters the existing ones. Reports Seven items, all requiring Reports read access: Item What it gives you Survey Report Analysis of the survey results. Interview Report Analysis of interview and focus group responses. Themes Report Findings grouped by theme. Comparison Report Survey results against interview results. Survey Data Export The raw survey data. Interview Data Export The raw interview data. Observation Data Export The raw observation data. Observations and Lessons Learned Both sit directly on the activity's menu rather than in a group. HEADS UP  Observations disappears from the menu when the activity is locked, as do Properties and Activity Feed. Reports and responses stay reachable, so a locked activity is still fully readable. Beyond the Activities Entry What it does Lessons Learned Review The shared library of lessons across activities, where you can browse and endorse them. Profile Your account — change your password here. Logout Signs you out.   GOOD TO KNOW  Administrators see additional entries here — question and theme management, cross-activity reports, and an Administration group. Those are covered in the NSCAT Admin Manual. Why Your Menu Differs From a Colleague's 1.      Your per-area access. Each group appears only if you have read access to that area. 2.      Read versus write. With read-only access the group appears but its create actions are hidden or greyed out. 3.      The activity's lock status. Locking removes Observations, Properties, and Activity Feed for everyone. 4.      Their account role. A Utility Admin sees things you do not — including the deleted observations list on the Observations page. PRO TIP  Before asking why you cannot find something, check whether the whole group is missing or just the button inside it. A missing group means no read access to that area; a missing button means read but not write. The two need different fixes. Common Problems What you see What it means Access Restricted under an activity You are not assigned to it. Ask to be added. An activity is missing entirely You have no assignment on it, or it belongs to another utility. A whole group is missing No read access to that area. A group is there but you cannot create anything Read access without write. Create Survey greyed out No survey write access — or a survey already exists. Submit Response missing on an interview A response already exists. Use Response instead. Observations missing The activity is locked. A colleague sees a button you do not on Observations They are a Utility Admin. See Observations. Lock icon beside a title The activity is read-only. Only a COG Admin can unlock it. Progress bars that do not resolve Reload the page.