Occasionally, people forget their primary devices at home, lose them or are without them while they are being repaired. Should you find yourself in this situation with the need to log-in to one of Detroit Mercy’s systems, some advance preparation will allow you to access your accounts.
The key to being prepared involves not only acting in advance, but establishing alternative second factor authentication options.
Microsoft offers the following options at this time:
- Notification through the Authenticator App (preferred method)
- Text message to your primary authentication device (typically a cell phone)
- Voice call to your primary authentication device (typically a cell phone)
- Voice call to your “office” phone (which could be any additional phone line such as a home phone, dorm room phone, parent’s phone, Google phone, etc.)
- Voice call to your “alternate” phone (which could be any additional phone line such as a home phone, dorm room phone, parent’s phone, Google phone, etc.)
Please note: Microsoft does not offer an option to send a code to an email address
If you are a student or employee and do not have access to an office or alternate phone and do not want to depend on someone else to answer a home phone to provide a code to you, the Google phone option is worth exploring. Go to voice.google.com to sign up for your own personal phone number. Google can call that number which you can then answer through your browser when logged into your Google account. During the call, Microsoft will prompt you to press the # sign within the browser to complete the second authentication factor.
To establish your additional authentication options visit: https://aka.ms/MFASetup.
You do need to complete your multi-factor authentication to make changes. As stated earlier, it is important to do this in advance when you have access to your primary authentication device as it could be very difficult to complete without it.