Logon names, how do you do yours?

[jon_d]

We are looking to roll out a new system next year, and I am looking for ideas on naming conventions for pupil and staff accounts.

I've worked in some schools where all accounts were just numbered (s999 for staff, p999 for pupils), and some that name each account.

 

At the moment it seems to have been pretty much up to whoever happened to add the account - there has been no standard (underscores, dots, dashes, numbers, all of the above, take your pick!).

I now have the luxury of starting from scratch with a new domain and a free hand, but wondering what options are out there.

 

I'm interested to see how people are naming their accounts, what works well, what problems do you have, would you do anything differently?

 

So, how do you do yours?

[Meldrew]

We used to have Year-of-entry First-initial Lastname, giving, eg 13FBloggs, but were told to change this so that the username (which is also the email address) doesn't reveal student names when they are emailing outside of College as this could be a child protection risk.

 

Instead we switched to year-of-entry tutor admission-number, giving 13ABC1234 but this does give 3 problems:

We can't create user accounts until students have been admitted to College on the first day of school.

When students change tutor (which does happen from time to time) their username doesn't reflect this.

For students which come back in the 6th form the old tutor is in no way relevant at all.

 

Meldrew

[p858snake]

When I was in highschool, ours was just the student id numbers which were used for everything. eg, my login was 009277 (iirc) this was also printed on the ID cards to help people, staff were based on state governments Internet proxy scheme (so first letter of first, then first four of last, then the number you were added in based on last).

[Alis_Klar]

.

 

e.g. 13Jo.Bloggs (second letter is to avoid duplicates)

[jon_d]

Some interesting options there, keep them coming!

 

I was contemplating using staff code letters (3 letters) for the teaching staff accounts.

 

We don't really have any sort of generic id system, we have only just stared using UPN numbers, and only because we have been forced to - but a UPN is a bit long for a pupil to remember. I seem to remember this is some sort of composite key though, so possible to just use part of it?

 

Ideally whatever we choose ought to become the De facto standard for other systems as well - we seem to have so many different and convoluted systems going on in each department at the moment. Nightmare!

[Captain_Slow]

Staff here is first initial and surname, so Joe Blogs would be JBlogs - if there's a duplicate we'll use an initial from their middle name, so Joe David Blogs would be JDBlogs.

 

Fairly similar for students, Year of Entry, followed by first initial of firstname, first initial of middlename and surname - eg 13JDBlogs

[Oaktech]

Staff: first initial surname adam smith = asmith

Students: surname first initial anne smith = smitha in case of duplicate then andrea smith = smitha1

[6Foot2]

Staff: Staff code: Eg: PDC [for Peter Capaldi]

 

Students: Year of entry followed by surname and then first initial: Eg: 00RadcliffeD [for Daniel Radcliffe entering Year 7 in 2000. If there are two Daniel Radcliffes in the same year the second would get a username like 00RadcliffeDJ for Daniel Jacob Radcliffe]

[mrcrazy04]

At uni it was our student number, which was 7 digits and began with the year of entry (e.g. 1301234). Staff had a mixture of letters and numbers (it didn't seem to be related to their initials in any way), with their email addresses being j.smith for John Smith.

 

Another system I've seen is first 3 digits of surname, followed by first 3 digits of firstname e.g. for John Smith it would be smijoh. I think the reasoning for that was that it's easier to remember than a number, but you can't accurately determine the student's name from the username.

[mrbios]

staff: Lastname+firstletter of firstname so: bloggsj for example

students: Year of birth / First letter of first name / first 2 letters of last name / day + month of birth. so for example: 99jbl0101 for a joe bloggs born on the first of the first 1999.

[hardtailstar]

ours are first initial followed by surname so it would look like this: jbloggs

 

My old school had year of starting at end: jbloggs99 for example

[Ephelyon]

For staff, we use their staff code (i.e. initials). For pupils, we use:

 

Intake year + First initial + Middle initial (if they have one) + Surname

 

So that would be 13JBSmith for example. No duplicates at all for the past two years. We use a report on Accepted Pre-admissions in SIMS to automatically generate accounts over the summer before September. I have the script to do all this if anyone is interested.

[nickbro]

Ours:

 

 

• Students, either:
  
  • 00XY
    
    • 00 = Intake Year (i.e. 13)
      
    • X = First Letter of First Name
      
    • Y = First Letter of Surname
      
    • A suffix is attached (1,2,3) if there are more that 1 of them
      

     

    [*]c00XY

    • Same as Above, except the prefix C stands for cluster, and these students have been migrated from the primary school cluster network
      

     

    [*]All Students have:

    • UPN Stored in EmployeeID Attribute
      
    • Admission Number Stored in EmployeeNumber Attribute
      
    • Photo (if available) Stored in jpegPhoto/thumbPhoto/Photo Attributes
      
    • Form Group Stored in the Department Attribute
      
    • I made a program that runs a SIMS report to get all this information out of SIMS and upload it to the student's AD attributes
      
    • been created from a SIMS CSV export, which I then run through the CC4 RMMC to make the users (except for the cluster which uses a website and a RM integris report)
      

   

  [*]Staff

  • XXXXXXXXY
    
    • X = First Name
      
    • Y = First Letter of surname
      

[FishCustard]

Staff:

 

+

 

So 'Malcolm Reynolds' would become 'mreynolds'. Should there be username collisions (say a 'Michelle Reynolds' existed), we'd disambiguate by adding another letter from the first name in, e.g. 'mireynolds').

 

Students:

 

+ + .

 

So a 'William Riker' in intake year 2013 would become '13rikerw'. Extra letters from the first name are added to disambiguate. This is something of a hold-over from our (soon to be!) old CC3 system. Works perfectly well though, and reduces the chance of username collisions.

[SovietRussia]

Staff:

 

firstinitialsurname (So jbloggs)

 

Students:

 

colorNUMBER (E.g. pink167)

Each year is given a color and recycled after they leave.

 

Sixth Form:

 

YearStartedCandidateNumber (E.g. y130001)

[KrisTech]

My school had a system like this:

 

Staff: BloggsJ

Students: (Year of entering school)(Firstname letter)(surname) E.G: 13jbloggs

[F3000]

We have:

 

Pupils: Intake year + admission number (e.g. 139999)

Staff: Surname + number + first initial (e.g. Bloggs1J)

 

The number in the staff is for when there are multiple staff with the same initial and surname and increases each time e.g Bloggs2J