Unique User Names for 17,000 users...

[Jim Heynderickx]

Here's an interesting question:

If we build a true web portal for alumni, parents, students and faculty/staff, and it has a single user list with one or more roles per user, what is the best design for a single login system?

I know that a single login window makes sense, and it can use multiple types of authentication systems (local list, LDAP, etc.), but how would users identify themselves against a total list of users that is around 17,000? It seems like there would be a lot of smithj13 users, for example, as typical lastname first initial usernames encounter duplicates in the system. It could also mean that new students to the school would need to have usernames that compete with 17,000 already reserved.

So, we're looking for cool and simple solutions others have done, seen or recommend.

Thanks!

[Demetri Orlando]

for our students the convention is first name, last name, class year (2 digits).
e.g. johnsmith12
it makes for longish usernames, but it works.

if we have more than two john smiths in the class of 2012 then we throw in a middle initial for the student who matriculated 2nd.

it is important that we use legal names not nicknames, since this is the info we collect on an application and in Blackbaud, and we set up the accounts before we ever meet the kids and find out that John actually goes by a nickname.

[Doug Alexander]

This is a problem that major universities have no doubt already run into - I know when I graduated in '96 it was the first year my school had given out alumni..edu addresses. So now they've been doing it for 12 years and our logins are still just usernames...but other school might have a different method. Have you contacted a university near you? Do UK universities give out alumni addresses as well?

[Jim Heynderickx]

Thanks for the comments.

I guess my problem with unique usernames resides primarily with the 14,000 alumni ones. Basically to make them unique, they are going to become as cryptic as the passwords (but the alumni can't change the usernames like they can do with the passwords). Demetri's idea is good, but we also have parents and friends in the alumni database who don't have graduation years that can be attached to their names.

One suggestion we might follow is to allow alumi to enter the first two or more letters of their last names, and then choose their name from a list and enter their password. Thus, their usernames remain hidden and can be anything we like.

For current parents, students, faculty and staff, we'll have LDAP usernames that must be unique, or usernames and passwords controlled by the online SIS system (for parents, for example, to whom we don't give email accounts).

An alternative is to go the live@edu route, and code their username into a unique email for life sort of arrangement, but this would only work for a sub-set of our alums who are graduates. Our 14k userbase includes parents, friends, etc., to whom we'd not give an email for life.

Fun stuff... :)

[Lisa Sjogren]

We do not have that many people. But our schematic is as follows.

yyFirstNameLastName

where yy is the year the student graduated.

We then use password generator (http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/) to generate our passwords. You do 50 at a time, so it will take a while but it is worth it.