User naming convention
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We have two Mikes in our small organization which is a pain. @Mike-Ralston was in first and got "mike" in all of the systems. @Mike-Davis was in second and opted for "mdavis".
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@crustachio said in User naming convention:
I think that numbers in a name aren't the most professional looking solution. Finding an alternative to distinguish them might be worthwhile.
I agree. Those work find for factory workers, but people needing to communicate with the outside world you should try to find an alternative to.
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I guess I'll pile on - numbers do seem rather mechanical, impersonal.
I wish I would have though considered using email address for domain logons when we changed FQDN.... it does work, but users don't use it.
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@scottalanmiller said in User naming convention:
@thwr said in User naming convention:
@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
- Does anyone else thinks this matters from an end users standpoint? (I've asked and have gotten mixed results)
I've seen that a few times with very common names like Hans Müller or John Smith. Users actually may feel uncomfortable, but this is even more annoying when it comes to the mail address than to their username. It's odd to tell a user that his new mail address will be [email protected]. There's no real solution except for adding a department, like [email protected] or even a mail subdomain like [email protected]. Adding middle names may actually help.
- Am I wrong to push my thoughts for growth and automation, despite what others may think of their "cloned" username including management?
- Is there already some BP that I'm missing?
My gut tells me to standup for my opinion and push the #'s in the case of duplicates. What do you all think?
What else could you do? Maybe give everyone a generated name made from random alphas (AWESOME\rkvzhs), but this will introduce a whole new problem: "Hey, Kelly here from XXX. Uhm, you know, I forgot my username again?"
This is why I always tell companies to use my full name. There is almost never a problem if they do that. I think that all companies, of any size, need a human involved at this point. Names like jsmith3 are impersonal and unfair. It means that jsmith (which could be john smith, josh smith, jay smith, jorge smith, javier smith, jarl smith, Jonathan smith, jacob smith, jane smith, jill smith, janet smith, jerry smith, janelle smith, and so on and on) could be reasonably one of the first people in the company but get a shitty email while some new hire that will only stay a month gets a sweet pristine name just for not having a common name or initial.
I think having humans who get involved and do logical things makes the most sense. It's a bad thing to automate.
If it wasn't for the fact that they have NEVER moved disabled users and there's 261 of them I find that at least automating the first time is going to be required. I don't have time to manually track down all of them. I just started with this company so lot's of things to improve. Going forward I'm creating a process for termed users that we would have time to manually deal with. So following that logic I think I'll just use the middle initial and won't worry about automating the entire process just the first run.
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@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
If it wasn't for the fact that they have NEVER moved disabled users and there's 261 of them....
Maybe start with cleaning that up
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@scottalanmiller said in User naming convention:
@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
If it wasn't for the fact that they have NEVER moved disabled users and there's 261 of them....
Maybe start with cleaning that up
That's the goal! Next I'm moving to GP. Right now they have a logon script that installs every printer on the network. This is going to be a great place to grow I think.
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@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
@scottalanmiller said in User naming convention:
@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
If it wasn't for the fact that they have NEVER moved disabled users and there's 261 of them....
Maybe start with cleaning that up
That's the goal! Next I'm moving to GP. Right now they have a logon script that installs every printer on the network. This is going to be a great place to grow I think.
Logon scripts eh? GPP for the win.
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@Dashrender said in User naming convention:
@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
@scottalanmiller said in User naming convention:
@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
If it wasn't for the fact that they have NEVER moved disabled users and there's 261 of them....
Maybe start with cleaning that up
That's the goal! Next I'm moving to GP. Right now they have a logon script that installs every printer on the network. This is going to be a great place to grow I think.
Logon scripts eh? GPP for the win.
I plan on implementing this for the printers and shares. It's been a busy two weeks trying to learn position, policy, and people. My ultimate goal is to rid this network of the logon script and filter the access to security groups. If this is either too much work, or the wrong approach please let me know.
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@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
@Dashrender said in User naming convention:
@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
@scottalanmiller said in User naming convention:
@Count-Chocula said in User naming convention:
If it wasn't for the fact that they have NEVER moved disabled users and there's 261 of them....
Maybe start with cleaning that up
That's the goal! Next I'm moving to GP. Right now they have a logon script that installs every printer on the network. This is going to be a great place to grow I think.
Logon scripts eh? GPP for the win.
I plan on implementing this for the printers and shares. It's been a busy two weeks trying to learn position, policy, and people. My ultimate goal is to rid this network of the logon script and filter the access to security groups. If this is either too much work, or the wrong approach please let me know.
Sounds like you're on the correct path to me.
Don't get me wrong, Logon scripts aren't bad - they can be insanely powerful, they just aren't the typical modern way to manage most things on Windows machine these days...
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To have a powerful login script, it becomes pretty complicated though - compared to how easy it is to do in Group Policy.
As far as the original topic, I agree with using email address as login names. I would also make the usernames "guessable". That way if you know one employees email address is firstname.lastname you have a chance at guessing another employee's email address. Let's face it, spammers are going to get it anyways, so you might as well make it easy on your clients.
