To access AERPAW using the Portal website, an Experimenter needs to initially use the Portal and create an AERPAW User ID. Then, to be able to create Projects and Experiments, it is necessary to request corresponding specific Roles.
Both of these are one-time operations that need to be done before any access to AERPAW is possible.
The link to the Web Portal can be found on the AERPAW website, and also elsewhere in this User Manual. When you first visit the Portal, you see only some general information, and the only action you can undertake is to request registration with AERPAW. This is done by logging in to your identity provider (details in Section 4.7.1).
When you first register as a User in the AERPAW Portal, you have no assigned Roles. In order to use AERPAW for performing experiments, you must have at least the Experimenter role. So, you should request the Experimenter role at this point (details in Section 4.7.2). This request will need to be reviewed by AERPAW authorities (typically the AERPAW PD, or possibly the Steering Committee), so it might be a day or two before you receive approval.
After you receive approval to be an Experimenter, you can similarly request a role as a Principal Investigator (PI) if you expect to be in position to oversee the work of various Experimenters working with you in your organization, and in particular if you will be the person responsible for payment (details in Section 4.7.2).
In a later step, you will use the ssh utility to access the AVNs, with keyed access that ensures nobody else has access to these AVNs. Using the Portal you have to supply the public part of the key to AERPAW Ops, so it can be installed into those AVNs. The logical time to supply such credentials is now, right after registering yourself as an AERPAW User (details in Section 4.7.2).
The ssh credentials take the form of a public-private key pair. You should supply the public key to AERPAW via the Portal, and save the private key in your work computer.
At this point you are just creating and saving these credentials; use of these credentials is described later in this section, and in more detail in Section 4.7.5.