Question

When is a Temporary Affiliate Form appropriate?

Overview

Note: The TAF process is only for UCD campus affiliates and excludes UC Davis Health.

UC Davis Health affiliates please use this link: UC Davis Health Affiliate Form

The Temporary Affiliate Account, often times referred to as Temporary Affiliate Form (TAF), allows a department to sponsor an individual with a campus computing account. There are several reasons to consider sponsoring an individual for a TAF:

• Former Student or Employee that needs to extend access to complete or transfer work
• Future Faculty or Staff
• Seasonal Employee
• The individual will need access to Kerberos protected resources to perform research for the university.
• The individual is not enrolled as a student or employed as a faculty/staff member at the university but performs necessary tasks in a volunteer position that needs Kerberos protected resources.

A TAF is good for one-year (364 days) and can be renewed an unlimited amount of times. We recommend renewing a TAF before it expires to avoid any interruption in access to the sponsored user's account.

Users will get a basic limited computing account including standard Microsoft email.

Email accounts for former temporary affiliates will be retired on February 1, 2024. If enabled, email forwarding will end for these accounts on the same date. Former temporary affiliates include former temporary staff, contractors, volunteers, and others designated as TAF. Former students, former faculty, and former staff are not impacted at this time. 

TAFs can occasionally cause duplicate entries in the computing accounts database. This will lead to access issues to many services including but not limited to Time Reporting System, Kuali/Rice, and MyTravel. Please contact IT Express if this occurs. https://iet.ucdavis.edu/support

Answer

In general, a TAF should only be used for an individual who will be serving with UC Davis for a short period of time, needs access to secure services, and will not be listed in the Banner Student Information System (SIS), or UCPath. There are other circumstance when a TAF can be used, but the sponsor and affiliate must pay careful attention to ensure the proper computing account records are modified.

A TAF must be initiated by the sponsor. Sponsors must adhere to the standards outlined in the Temporary Affiliate Departmental Review and Approval Standard article. The steps and procedure for the TAF process can be read here.

The affiliate is a former employee or student who will be assisting on a project, is providing transition support, or needing to complete a class.

In these cases is is important that the affiliate mark that they were a prior account holder and provide either their old employee ID number, old student ID number, or their correct UC Davis email address in that portion of the TAF. If the incorrect ID number or email address is provided, the wrong account will be updated with the new expiration date and the intended account will remain inactive or in "Going Away" status.

If you are graduated or no longer attending UC Davis, your computing account does close. If there is class work your professor or department of major is requiring you complete, you will need to speak to your professor or major department for assistance with a TAF.

The affiliate is a future employee.

In this case, the sponsor must mark the 'Future Employee' box on the TAF form and if able to the affiliate/future employee must put their Social Security Number in the SSN field.
Failure to do both steps will result in multiple database records to be created. Do not create a second account. This will result in problems accessing:

• Time Reporting System
• UC Learning Center
• Canvas
• Kuali/DaFIS
• Rice
• Other services dependent on the affiliate's loginID to be associated with their employee record in UCPath.

These access issues can only be fixed by manually merging the TAF and employee in the computing accounts database and allow time for the merged information to be picked up by all services. Please contact IT Express for assistance. https://iet.ucdavis.edu/support

The affiliate is a seasonal employee.

In the case of a seasonal employee or faculty members who do not have year round appointments, if they already have a UC Davis computing account, then the guidelines for a former employee should be followed. If they do not already have an account, then the new hire guidelines should be followed.

Whether or not to use a TAF is the department's decision.

The above best practices are not set in stone. There are circumstances such as new professor will needing an account prior to arriving but may not be willing to provide their SSN or their Tax ID Number has not yet been issued, or an new resident must complete training before the start of employment, etc. For example, a delay in getting access based on employee status may be acceptable to ensure necessary training is complete. Different circumstances may mean it is better for the affiliate to have a computing account and then merge database entries after the fact instead of waiting for a full record to be available in the computing accounts database.

More information can be found in the TAF User Guide.