MIS-linked AD account creation... how do you deal with duplicate names?

[gshaw]

For those of you that upload from an MIS database into AD, how do you deal with the issue of duplicate display names? Unless I'm being really stupid AD won't take two David Beckhams for example and the only way round it seems to be adding an extra initial or something along those lines?

What's your preferred method for this?

[tmcd35]

Most systems I've seen use an auto-incrementing number. So if you have 3 David Beckhams (god helps us!) then you end up with BeckhamDa, BeckhamDa1, BeckhamDa2 - and so forth.

EDIT: re-read the question. I thought only the username had to be unique? I'm sure we have the odd duplicate here. AD should allow as meny David Beckham display names as you have unique usernames for. Or so I thought...

[gshaw]

Is that on the username or on the display name? We've got unique usernames based on student codes but it seems to be the "name" of the user that's the issue?

Error is: Windows cannot create the new user object because the name *username* is already in use. Select another name, and then try again

So I'm thinking of David 1. Beckham, David 2. Beckham etc. Or maybe multiple Wayne Rooneys (Roonai?) would be better

Edit: it appears you can have dupes but not in the same OU? Not much use for us in that case! Back to the auto incrementing middle names it is then!