About the Catalyst Login System

Help Center → Web Tools Account Help Center → About the Catalyst Login System

The LST Catalyst Web Tools are a set of Web-based communication and collaboration applications designed for use in teaching, learning, research, and everyday work. Use of the Catalyst Web Tools is free to anyone in the UW community. To access the Catalyst Web Tools, click Web Tools Login and log in with your UW NetID.

Facilitating Collaboration

The Catalyst Web Tools are designed to support Web-based communication and collaboration for the University of Washington community. In order to facilitate cross-university collaboration and communication with individuals not affiliated with the UW, our login system allows people to access Catalyst tools with a free ProtectNetwork ID.

If you are working with faculty, students, or researchers at other universities and you would like them to be able to login with the ID that they use at their own institution, please let us know. We will contact the technology staff at their institution to facilitate such collaboration.

What is ProtectNetwork?

ProtectNetwork is an independent Identity Provider service. They provide open standards-based, federated, online user identities (ProtectNetwork IDs). ProtectNetwork IDs enable authorized access to Web applications, like the Catalyst Web Tools, that are protected with open standard technologies such as Shibboleth or OpenID. In other words, after registering with ProtectNetwork, they will vouch for you when another online service using the same technology wants to verify your identity.

What does a ProtectNetwork ID allow?

The Solstice -based Catalyst Web Tools—namely Collect It, GoPost, Group Manager, QuickPoll, ShareSpaces, UMail, and WebQ—are now accessible with a ProtectNetwork ID. You can grant ProtectNetwork ID users access as either a participant or a collaborator in these tools. For example, your co-instructor from another university can now comment on student papers in a Collect It dropbox; your research colleagues can collaborate on documents using SharedSpaces or download survey results from WebQ; or your guest lecturer can read and respond to student questions on a GoPost discussion board.