Changing naming scheme for pupils...

[rickjames]

Best place to ask I guess. Not definite, enquiring etc.

 

At our school pupils login details are a bit clunky/awful looking and I was wondering if there was an easy way of sorting it. Currently we take the initials of our school, followed by the first four letters of their surname, followed by the first three letters of their forename, finished with the year they enrolled at the school. So, David Attenborough would be ksattedav15

 

Staff naming scheme is just firstinitial.surname ie d.attenborough. I'd like to configure it like this for the pupils with their leaving year instead at the end. Is this easy enough to do on a bulk job? Pupils are in their own separate OUs and all that.

 

Cheers!

[sted]

mine are either yoe first initial first 5 of surname s 5fblogg or yoe first name so 5fred (if there are 2 freds add first letter of surname to end if(so 5fredb) 2 fred b's first 2 of surname (5fredbl)

[rickjames]

Whilst it's OK for the slightly older kids to work out I can't help but feel it'd be easier for them to remember if I changed it to something like what staff have.

[Arreks]

Should be doable via Powershell, I used a script to bulk change email addresses etc before in AD so I'll have a look for that.

[Trojan]

Bulk AD Users

 

Would be perfect for this I think, I've used to modify details en-masse. Very powerful indeed.

[halbaradkenafin]

Very quick oneliner that should work (note I haven't tested this across more than one account so I'd strongly suggest leaving the -WhatIf parameter in and only take it out when your happy with that it will actually work):

 

Get-ADUser -Filter * -Searchbase "OU=StudentParentOU,OU=user,DC=Domain,DC=Local" -properties samaccountname | Foreach-object {$YearOfLeaving = [int]($_.SamAccountName.substring($_.SamAccountName.length -2)) + 5; $NewName = ($_.SamAccountName).Substring(0,$_.SamAccountName.length -2) + $YearOfLeaving;  Set-ADUser -Identity $_.SamAccountName -SamAccountName $NewName -UserPrincipalName "[email protected]" -whatif}

[rickjames]

Cheers. I'll perhaps give that a go with a test user, see what happens. Ta.

[LiamH]

I would go down the long term route and just start with new intake and move them over, Depends how responsive your students are but the amount the pupils we had that couldn't remember their password never mind a new username would put me off doing this!

[HallX]

Dont know if this is of any use but, we use the first 4 letters of their Surname + their exam number. This a) Makes their username unique b) Keeps them separated into yeargroups c) Makes them remember their exam number. I understand this wont work for primary school pupils.

[nelliott]

I use first inital surname and yoe so jbloggs2015

[Sephiroth]

We use SIMS admission number. Ensures that every account is unique, there is no identifying information in the username (fairly important as they have remote access via Google mail and our VLE, both of which use their AD credentials), and means that a student cannot have an account until they're formally admitted to the school, regardless of pressure on us.

[round2it]

what I do here is

surname and first initial if we have 2 of the same we use the first three letters of the firstname eg smithj and smithjac

 

then I store the students in the year of intake NI2015 ni2014 this has worked well for many years no messing around with the year they are in.

 

2pence worth

[Sephiroth]

I use first inital surname and yoe so jbloggs2015

 

We used to do this, but it became unmanageable. Apparently there are lots of very similar names in our area. Having 10BloggsJ1...5 is very confusing.

[localzuk]

One thing to note - you shouldn't really be putting full names if those usernames are used for any external contact details - eg. their pupil email addresses. BECTA guidelines were to use a scheme like that which you're using at the moment or similar, to improve the protection for the kids.