AD Name restructuring

[Sydders01]

Hi All,

 

At the moment we have a naming convention of users initial and surname but we have got a new Head and she wants it changed to users full name and surname.We have suggested we make that an alias .Please what are your take on this?

 

Thanks

[elsiegee40]

I would go with an alias too.

 

You are going to have to preserve old email addresses as aliases if you do change to prevent emails bouncing as people, especially external users, get used to the new convention.

 

Then there's all the websites and mailing lists that people would need to reregister/change registration for if they got a new email address.

 

Aliases definitely

 

Better still. Sit down and work out the knock on effect - logins, websites, registrations, notifications from $product and then use that as evidence that it's more work than the Bead realises

Edited July 19, 2017 by elsiegee40

[angrycomputingteacher]

I would go with an alias too.

 

You are going to have to preserve old email addresses as aliases if you do change to prevent emails bouncing as people, especially external users, get used to the new convention.

 

Then there's all the websites and mailing lists that people would need to reregister/change registration for if they got a new email address.

 

Aliases definitely

 

Better still. Sit down and work out the knock on effect - logins, websites, registrations, notifications from $product and then use that as evidence that it's more work than the Bead realises

Out of interest, how would you setup aliases for users in Active Directory?

[elsiegee40]

Out of interest, how would you setup aliases for users in Active Directory?

I assumed you knew if aliases were possible and the question was about the best approach

 

Are you using Exchange for email?

 

I haven't used that. We could do it in EasyMail and subsequently GAFE. It's a long boring process whatever setting up each individual alias. We used relatively few aliases in a small school and for email only.

 

In AD, I suspect it's a long boring process too unless someone knows of a tool

[angrycomputingteacher]

I assumed you knew if aliases were possible and the question was about the best approach

 

Are you using Exchange for email?

 

I haven't used that. We could do it in EasyMail and subsequently GAFE. It's a long boring process whatever setting up each individual alias. We used relatively few aliases in a small school and for email only.

 

In AD, I suspect it's a long boring process too unless someone knows of a tool

We're not using Exchange

[Koldov]

I'm not trying to be inflammatory, just actually wondering what your Head has to do with AD?

 

Just curious...

 

I would be horrified if my Head started questioning this type of thing.

 

I know the OP is fairly vague, but is it actually to do with how things show up on email or other things that export info from AD?

[psydii]

Sometimes you do what a new Head asks, because that wasn't the battle to fight.

[aguacate]

Just to clarify, is this display Name or login name?

[Boredguy]

Logically having staff users login with their fullname does not appear to be a good idea, but depends how the school wishes to interact with students (assuming OP is referring the staff and not just students)

 

You can rename users in AD so you could create a powershell script to rename the accounts.

 

If it's just referring to e-mail display names it depends on what system you are using. If it's gmail or Office365 that is AD synced then it should pick up the display name field which again is easy to alter via script.

[mavhc]

Ask why. Until you know that you can't know if it's a good idea or not. Maybe they're confused.