Can’t log in to SAS On-demand? Maybe this is why

The other night, I was annoyed. This is a common state for me, so not too surprising. 

I was annoyed because I could not log on to SAS On-demand. I would click the icon on my desktop and the log in screen would come up with my username filled in. About a minute after I typed in my password, the log in screen would come back up again.

I logged into my SAS Profile account using the same username, so it was obviously not a problem with my password. (As you will discover, “obviously” may have not been the word I was looking for here.)

I checked to see if the SAS server status was active (it was).

I tried logging in on a second computer to see if maybe the problem was with my computer. (No luck.)

I tried Google to see if anything came up on the search “Can’t log in to SAS On-Demand”  but all it gave me was stuff I already knew was not the problem, e.g., make sure your internet connection is working (check), make sure you have SAS On-Demand installed on your computer (check) , make sure you have the right password (check), make sure the server is up (check).

Since it was 2 a.m., I figured hey, maybe their server is down for maintenance. Went to bed, worked all day, forgot about it and then had the SAME problem the next night at which point I emailed SAS tech support.

The helpful email I received back said that even though your SAS profile uses the same password as SAS On-Demand, your SAS On-Demand password expires after 180 days whereas your SAS profile password does not. When you registered for SAS On-Demand, it did tell you that your password would expire in 180 days, somewhere in the pages of information. (I know, because I went back, re-read it and found that part.)

However, when you try to log in, nothing  tells you that your password is expired and since the SAS profile password does NOT expire, you might reasonably assume when you use it to log into your SAS profile, as I did, that it is working and has not expired. If you cannot remember when was the last time you changed your password, just go on the assumption it has been over 180 days and change it.

Now what?

1. Just quit being a whiner and go change your password.  Go here to change it. https://www.sas.com/profile/user/login.htm

2. That sounded like a good idea, unfortunately, I STILL could not log in to SAS On-Demand. I logged into the control center. It showed my account was active. It showed that my institution was Pepperdine. All good, right? However, the course I was teaching in the fall is over. I was using SAS On-Demand in part to prepare for my SAS Global Forum Hands-on Workshop and partly to test exercises and demonstrations for the following semester.  You might think (reasonably) that a professor would have no need for SAS On-Demand for Academics when the semester is over. That presumes that you are only planning your course once the semester has already started, which is a pretty silly assumption. One thing I learned from getting a Ph.D. with three children under age five in the house is to never, never leave anything to the last minute because that is exactly when two of them will come down with chicken pox.

So  — if you find yourself at  2 a.m. unable to log on, you have tried everything you can think of  and are all out of Chardonnay, don’t despair.  Change your password (NOTE: This can take up to 30 minutes to take effect. Go have another glass of Chardonnay.)  If that doesn’t work, register a course, even if you are not teaching it this semester.  Although I had very good luck and was able to log on within the hour, you DO get a notice saying it may take up to a day for your course to be available. (Go have  LOTS of Chardonnay.)

Thank you very much to Derek Hardison at SAS Tech Support for his assistance.

Thank you in general to the SAS Technical Support for not putting my phone number in the list of those they block. I know they have the technological know-how to figure out how to do it!