Glossary Item Box

Government Gateway 2.2.0 (MR-01) ISV Developer Help (Doc Version 06/03/08) | Send comments on this topic.

# Registering Principals and Agents

# How to Register a Principal or Agent

For a principal registration the categories are Individual (a citizen) and Organisation (company or business). There are also two variants; Gov-Individual and Gov-Organisation specifically for government users. These government categories support stricter password rules, including password expiry and repeated passwords.

For an agent registration the category is Agent – an agent organisation. The agent must supply a short Agent ID and optionally an Agent Friendly Name – the agent chooses these, for example, "Greyfriers" and "Greyfriers corporate and personal accountants". Successful registration causes the Gateway to generate a unique AgentCode that the Agent can retrieve using the SOAP Public Interface GsoGetUserDetails method. Note this AgentCode is required if a principal wishes to have an agent work on their behalf.

See Allocating Principal Enrolments for details.

The Principal or Agent user selects the authentication type they want to use, either a User ID/password or digital certificate. For a User ID/password, the user can provide a name – ideally their full name, but there is no checking, this field is purely for personalisation. The Principal or Agent user can optionally provide an email address. Certain Gateway operations send notifications/information by email so it is good practice to provide this address.

Note: There are SOAP Portal Interface methods:

- To create a principal credential for an Individual or, in the case of an Organisation, the first credential for a user in a new organisation
- To create the credential for the first agent in new agent organisation
- For a principal or agent (after they are registered) to change their credential email address, description, and (for an agent) their agent friendly name

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