Schools and organisations can use EPA to request:
- an Education Sector Logon for a person at their school
- changes for users who already have an Education Sector Logon
- deactivate accounts for staff who are no longer at their school.
On this page:
- Requesting access to EPA
- Recommended number of EPA Authorisers
- Tips for using EPA
Related informationLearn more
Requesting access to EPA
Only EPA Authorisers can use EPA.
Step 1 : Make sure you have the approval of your chief executive, principal, vice chancellor, or equivalent to become an EPA Authoriser.
Step 2 : Fill out the EPA Authoriser form [PDF; 164KB] (for security purposes, it’s a paper form).
To understand how many EPA Authorisers your school or organisation might need, go to Recommended number of EPA Authorisers .
Requesting application roles and entitlements in EPA
An EPA Authoriser can request access on behalf of staff to most Sector applications used within the school. At the time of writing (29th June 2015) access to the following applications is available via EPA:
e-asTTleNZQA Secondary School Extranet (NZQA SSE).Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT).
More applications will be made available in time, however if the access your staff require is not yet in EPA then please continue to use the paper forms for your staff, from our Education Sector Request Forms webpage .
Note: to apply for Attendance Service Application (ASA) School User access, please refer to Get access to ASA .
Recommended number of EPA Authorisers
As schools and organisations are usually busy, we recommend you have 2 or more people set up as EPA Authorisers, especially if:
- your school or organisation regularly manages more than 15 to 20 requests per day
- you have days when the number of requests suddenly increases (you go from processing zero or one request a day to 40 or more requests a day)
- you need backup when EPA Authorisers are on holiday or sick.
If you’re in a large high school you might need 3 or 4 EPA Authorisers to cover busy periods, such as the start of term 1 when there are a lot of requests for setup in e-asTTle.
The Service Desk may question the need for access if there are more than 4 EPA Authorisers at any one school or organisation.
Note: EPA Authorisers are unable to transfer their role to another person. If another authoriser is required, please refer to the steps in the section of Requesting access to EPA .
Tips for using EPA
Finding EPA using a search engine
Although EPA can be found by all search engines (for example, Google and Bing), it doesn’t rank highly in search results. So, it might not appear on the first page.
We recommend you bookmark the address in your browser for easy access.
The site is: https://epa.education.govt.nz .
What to do if EPA looks a bit strange in your browser.
EPA has been built using the latest standards. The easiest thing to do is to download the latest version of your chosen browser, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.
Contact the Service Desk if you’ve downloaded the latest version and you’re still having problems.
- Phone 0800 422 599 (option 4)
- Email service.desk@education.govt.nz
What to do if you need to cancel a request
EPA acts just like the paper forms you previously used.
The requests you complete in EPA still go to the Service Desk for checking and the Service Desk is responsible for entering the information into the Education Sector Logon System. You aren’t changing anything directly in the system.
If you send in a request by mistake, contact the Service Desk – they’ll cancel the request for you.
- Phone 0800 422 599 (option 4)
- Email service.desk@education.govt.nz .
What to do if you need to change anything on your request form
If you’ve made a mistake or forgotten to put something in a request, the Service Desk may be able to help you. However, they may have to cancel the request and ask you to submit a new one, or you may have to wait for one request to be processed before submitting another.
Clicking the ‘Sign and Submit’ button in EPA is the equivalent of an electronic signature. Your signature is signing off on everything in the request. Therefore you can’t add anything to a request or change a request without signing it again.
What the progress bars on the Your Requests page mean
The progress bar on the Your Request page lets you know how far along the request is with the Service Desk.
What to do if you see an error message asking you to send a code to the Service Desk
EPA generates an event ID whenever there is an error that it doesn’t know how to handle itself. EPA displays this unique ID on the screen and asks you to email the event ID to the Service Desk.
The screen looks like this:
Description of image : An example of a screenshot of the screen where an error message has occurred.
If you see an event ID on your screen, it doesn’t always mean that EPA has stopped working.
Troubleshooting error messages
Before you contact the Service Desk, click on the EPA home page button or the Your Users / Your Requests buttons to see if you can continue.
If you still get the event ID, close down your browser and restart it.
If you still get an event ID after restarting your browser, then
- call the Service Desk to log the issue
- send us the event ID and a screenshot in an e-mail.
Please note that the Service Desk can’t resolve the issue for you over the phone. They will forward it to the technical team who will try to diagnose the problem. Once the technical team has determined the cause, the Service Desk will contact you with the results and resolution steps (if needed).
What to do if EPA logs you out
If there’s no activity in EPA for 20 minutes, EPA automatically logs you out. This is a security feature. Click on the Logon button to go back to working in EPA.
The screen looks like this:
What to do if the same person is listed multiple times on the Your Users page
Contact the Service Desk if you can see the same person with two or more user accounts. The Service Desk will help you to understand why it has happened and if there are any steps that need to be taken to resolve the issue.
Related information
It is recommended that all Education Sector authorisers, delegated authorisers, users and other stakeholders of the Education Sector Logon service read these documents to understand their responsibilities.
Evidence of Identity requirementsConditions of UseEducation Sector Logon OverviewCode of PracticeOperations Policy.
The documents are available on the ESAA website .