Use this activity to authenticate a user with a personal Questions and Answers profile. In this activity you can specify mandatory and helpdesk questions from user’s Q&A profile that a user must answer to be authenticated.

IMPORTANT: If the questions you selected in this activity are not found in the user’s Q&A profile, the user will not be authenticated and the workflow containing this activity will not be performed for this user.

You can select one of the following authentication methods:

• Answers to the specified questions (user’s answer is shown). In this mode, a helpdesk operator will ask a user for complete answers to the specified questions, and then compare them to the answers displayed on the identity verification page.

  IMPORTANT: This option cannot be used if user answers to mandatory questions are not stored using reversible encryption. To store answers using reversible encryption, select the corresponding option in the Q&A profile settings. For more information, see Configuring Q&A Profile Settings.

• Answers to the specified questions (user’s answer not shown). In this mode, a helpdesk operator will ask a user for complete answers to the specified questions, and enter the answers on the identity verification page.
• Random characters of answers to the specified questions. In this mode, a helpdesk operator will ask a user to tell the specified number of characters in the user's answer to a specified question, and then type in those characters in the appropriate positions on the identity verification page.