Naming Convention Suggestions

[quietas]

Hi folks, I've got my Zimra up and running now, all is well. To streamline my user creation and simply everyone's world, I am planning to add Active Directory (AD) external authentication using my Windows Server 2000 PDC simple a user/pass combo. I tested and AD authentication works on my test subdomain perfectly.

With 200-250 users rotating out frequently due to high turnover sometimes, I have run in to a lot of duplicate names. Previously setup, the company uses the 3 initials as the AD login (Alfred Blake Chapman = abc) and first name with last initial for email (alfredc@domain.com).

I've been thinking of instead moving both AD and email user names to a simple firstname.lastname structure. I should end up with less duplicates that way. I seem to have a lot of jenniferm's for example.

Any ideas or opinions?

[bdial]

using firstname + last initial probably produces more duplicates than first initial + last name. Our company used the latter standard from the beginning when we like a 200 person company. Now we are nearly 600 and find that we're getting a lot more duplicates so we sometimes do first initial + middle initial + last name.

we had wanted to move to a fistname.lastname base but management shot it down partially because they thought everyone knew how our e-mails were structurered a certain way and therefor could easily e-mail someone here just by following it. mostly i think they were just afraid of chcange.

ultimately if you're going to change it now, do it right. you're never going to really be free of duplication unless you used some sort of number system like most universities do. you could have multiple john.smith@domain.com. It really depends on how big you see your company getting and if you think duplication is going to become a real problem and not just a nuiscance.

[quietas]

That's about where I am thinking also. I'm seeing some dupes, but not that many. From our HR records we haven't ever had a person with the exact same first name and last name unless it was a rehire. At least that is the record so far.