 The USA visa portal in India has moved to a new platform effective from today 29th of July 2023. In this video, we're going to show you this new platform, give you a first look and walk you through it. Also, there's a really important step that you need to take in order to access your profile and your account on this new portal. And we're going to explain that as well. Keep on watching. Hi guys, my name is Shachi and I'm a travel and visa coach. On this channel, you'll find lots of useful videos on the US visa process. We have separate playlists for all the visa categories. So make sure to check it out. So effective from today, the USA visa systems have moved to a new portal. Now a really important thing to keep in mind is that the DS160 path has not changed. The DS160 portal, which is the US travel docs portal remains the same. That means the way the form looks, the details which are asked, everything is the same. There is no change in that. What has changed is your visa appointment portal. That means that the portal where you pay the visa fees, you book your appointments, you can see your schedule and also the place where you can change whether you want a delivery or a pickup option. That particular portal has undergone a change. Earlier it was powered by CJR Federal. Now it says that this platform is powered by Microsoft and it does look completely different. So if you try to log in onto the CJR Federal platform, you will get this message that your account is blocked. Do not panic. We are already getting a lot of messages for people saying that my account is blocked. Well, your account is not blocked. It's showing you this message because that old platform is no longer active. So nothing to panic here. To be able to access your account, there is a new link. This link is called USA visa should you link.com. You're going to leave the link for this right below in the description box. So you can access your account from this new link. However, there's a catch. If you just try to put in your old email and password, then it doesn't let you access. It gives you this error message. And that's because you need to migrate your profile to this new platform. You need to recreate your account into this new platform. And this is also very clearly explained in the official screenshot. So if you look at the screenshot right here from the US Embassy, it says that if you already have an account, if you already have an appointment, then there is no change that is required. Everything remains valid. However, you need to sign up and recreate your account onto the new portal. And this is required for everybody, whether you have booked a US visa appointment or not. As long as you have an account on the old platform, you need to transfer it and recreate your account. So for the next part of the video, I'm going to take you into the new platform and show you the exact steps that you need to take to recreate your profile. Let's get started. So the first step, go to the USA visa scheduling link that you will find in the description box. And when you open the link, you will see that right on top, it'll ask you for your username. Now this is something new. The earlier platform did not ask for any username, but this asks so you can create any username that you can remember. After you enter the username, it'll ask you for a new password. So the old password is again not going to be valid. So you have to create a new password and confirm the password. Then it asks for the email ID. Email ID remains the same. Please do not use another email ID. Whatever email ID you were using earlier for logging into your CJR Federal account, the same email ID can be used here as well. Once you enter the email ID, it sends you an OTP. Now again, this is something new. So this is an added layer of security. So it'll ask you for an OTP, which comes to the email ID. So you need to retrieve that and enter that here. Once that is done, the next part is the security questions. So the earlier platform had just one security question. Now this has become a little bit more complex. There are three security questions. So you choose the three questions, the three answers and enter that here. Once you have done all of this, click submit and then it'll take you to the next page, where it'll ask you to accept some terms and conditions. So once you accept the terms and conditions, it takes you to the new platform and here it is. This is what the new platform looks like. It looks pretty neat, pretty tidy, it says powered by Microsoft. And this in fact is a platform which is uniform in a lot of countries. So in India till now, the platform which was by CJR Federal looked quite different. But the platform that you see right now is pretty much the same, which is being used in other countries. So if you were to look at the visa appointment portal in countries in the Middle East, Australia, Canada, this is pretty much how it looks like. So we now have the same system here in India as well. Now there are a few changes which have happened into the new platform and let's take a look at what these changes are. The first and the most important change is that on the left side, you will see that the left bar has few auctions and the biggest auction which is missing is the update profile section. The old platform had an update profile wherein you could see your name, your passport, your address, your DS160 confirmation number and this number could be changed, which means that if you filled a new form and you wanted to update the DS160 number, you could have gone and done that yourself. The new platform does not give the update profile section which means that once the profile is created, there is no option for you to directly update the DS160 confirmation number. However, this does not mean that the number cannot be updated. I think there are few ways to work around this which I'll come to in a bit. The second change that we see is that there is a direct support tab which is added. So this was also not there in the earlier case and through this support tab, you can directly contact the customer ID, send in your messages and hopefully there is one quickly and resolve your queries. The third change, the appointment confirmation tab, this also looks quite different. So if you click on it and you can see on the screen right now that the appointment confirmation tab is more detailed. It's lendier than the earlier one. Also, when we try to print the appointment confirmation page, the appointment confirmation page also looks different than the existing appointment confirmation page. So these are the three biggest changes that we are seeing on the new platform compared to the old CJF again platform. Coming back to the really important part about DS160 form and I know that this is something which is a concern to a lot of you. Lot of you have been asking whether it will be possible to update the number now. Well, now here's my take. On the face of it, there is no direct option to update the DS160 number but there are still two ways in which it can be worked around. Number one is the support option. So you can definitely contact the customer ID, the support ID and ask them to update your DS160 number. So let's say that you found some errors, you filled a new form. Now you cannot do it directly but by contacting the customer support, you will be able to update the DS160 number. The second option is at the biometrics. So in India, the biometrics is still a different date and it's usually ahead of the interview date. So because of this structure, we still have the option or still have the flexibility to get the DS160 number updated at the biometrics. So when you go for the biometrics, you can request them to update the DS160 number. So you fill in the new form, take the new confirmation page and at the biometric, you can tell them to update your DS160 number. So there's no direct way to update it but either by contacting the customer support or at the biometric itself, it should be possible to update the DS160 number. However, I would still recommend that before you submit the form, take a lot of care, make sure that you get it reviewed, you're very, very thorough about it because end of the day, this is the only form that the visa officer has in front of him and this is what he's going to read. So before you hit that submit, be really careful, get it checked. In fact, you can get in touch with us. We can help you in reviewing filling your DS160 form as well. So these are all the updates about the new portal. I really hope that it gives you some clarity. So to summarize everything, here's what I would say. The old CJR portal is not working anymore. So if you get a blocked message, do not panic. The platform is not working. The new platform is USAVisaSheruling.com and here is where all the action is going to happen. Third, this new platform, you cannot access directly. You need to recreate your profile. You can use the old email ID, but you need a new password and new security questions. So go to the link which is there in the description box, recreate your profile and that way you'll be able to access your entire USA visa portal. Number four, DS160 form. So if you have already submitted the DS160 form and there are no changes to be done, that's great. But in case you feel that you would need to fill a new form or update the existing form, then in the new portal, there is no direct way to do it. However, by contacting the customer support or by requesting other biometrics, I think you should be still able to update the DS160 form. So this is the first look. Of course, we will be tracking all the changes very, very closely and any new information, we're going to bring it right here on this channel. So make sure that you subscribe and hit the bell icon. Signing off for now, lot more useful content coming up in the USA visa series. So stay tuned for that. Take care. See you on the next one.