If the plan sponsor has elected to provide plan participants with portal access and the plan is not closed to new participants, then User IDs and passwords need to be periodically produced and sent to new participants.

In general, this should be done at the end of the valuation data process after all of the data and statement work has been reviewed.

To produce User IDs and passwords, open the Plan Sponsor and then select Tools - Manage Portal Security from the main ribbon. If you press the Fill button on this screen, every participant listed that does not yet have a User ID will have both a User ID and password filled in.

Everybody with a password in the list is a new portal participant. Check the box Export to file and then press the OK button to get a listing of these participants in Excel.

In Excel, use a sort or filter to display participants that have a password and then create a mail merge in order to produce portal welcome letters for these new participants.