Sponsor FAQ

Guests are sponsored using their non-Berkeley Google account. If they don’t have one, they need to create one.

Sponsor FAQs

Who can create a CalNet Sponsored Guest?

Only UCB employees can create CalNet Sponsored Guest accounts. Sponsored Guests are invited by academic and staff employees via the Sponsored Guest application.

Multiple sponsors can invite the same guest, and sponsors can end, extend, or renew guests as needed. Please review the CalNet Guest Account Sponsor Guide before getting started.

How do I sponsor a guest?

A sponsor needs three pieces of information in order to invite a guest:  

  • First name

  • Last name

  • Email Address

Use Cirrus to send an invitation for a Sponsored Guest account: https://apps.cirrusidentity.com/console/auth/index. Guests should be sponsored for a year at maximum, and can be easily extended later if needed.

When will my guest expire?

Guest accounts are automatcially provisioned for one year. Your guest will expire on the 1-year annivarsary of you sending the invitation. You can opt to extend your guest at any point either before they expire or after. Do not extend a guest beyond one year.

When guests expire, they are no longer able to log in to campus applications, and are noted as expired in Cirrus, CalNet LDAP and CalNet BPR.

My Guest still has access! What do I do?

Since guests can have multiple campus sponsors, it is important to manage access control to your application or class directly in the application instead of relying upon Guest Account expiration dates. You may sponsor a guest for a year, but another employee may concurrently sponsor the same guest. If you do not remove the guest from your application or class, the guest will still be able to access it after the date you think they will lose access.

Can I transfer my Sponsored Guest to a new sponsor?

No, but there’s no need -- any employee can send an invitation to any Gmail account (except @berkeley.edu accounts). Each guests can have multiple sponsors. This also means that if you want to delete a guest, your guest may still have an active account via another campus sponsor. When deleting guests, make sure you also remove their access to your application or class.

When will my Sponsored Guest expire?

Guest account sponsorship  defaults to one year from the date the invitation was accepted. As a sponsor, you can change the end date as you please. See the Sponsor Guide for details. Remember, since multiple employees can sponsor a single guest concurrently, you need to make sure guests who you no longer want to be able to access your application or class are also excluded via application access controls.

Can my guest use bCourses?

Before you attempt to add a guest to bCourses: Your guest must successfully activate their Sponsored Guest Account before you add them to your course. Due to the way bCourses retrieves CalNet data, you may need to wait six hours after your Sponsored Guest claims their account before you can add them to your bCourse. Your guest will use their Google login to access your class. 

Adding guests to bCourses falls under the purview of the bCourses support team. See the bCourses Request Help page for assistance.

Can I convert my Sponsored Guest to another type of account?

No. Sponsored Guest accounts cannot be converted or combined with other CalNet accounts.

Have questions? Email calnet-admin@berkeley.edu for assistance.