Let the Market, the User in this case, decide. They enter a name that makes sense to them (easy to remember, for them, not you); either it's available or it's not. They keep trying until they get a match. If you 'generate' a name for them, you are ensuring that the name _will_ be written on a sticky note somewhere. ("I know it's some perversion of 'John Smith'; but is it jsmith, josmit, josmth, ...."). Personally, 'assigned user names' are right up there with automatically generated passwords. There are enough irritations in the Land of IT, don't add another one.

I once worked at a small Governmental Instution that assigned both User Name and Password as a random string of characters. We (the System and Security Admins) did a sweep one evening of the Managers Row, ostensibly to inventory and upgrade the network cabling. We found the passwords on Post-It notes in 10 of the 17 offices (I did say it was Government, remember). In five of the ten, both the name and password were on the Post-It.

At an other site, the naming policy was 'first three letters of your first name and first three letters of your last name'. That policy got changed the day after Fatime Hagadopian was hired.

Yes, you will have people giving themselves a cutsy-poo name. So? They are the ones who will have to live with 'iMaNid1ot'. Make sure that you have a reasonable password policy in place, enforce it, and don't worry about the User-IDs.

----
I Go Back to Sleep, Now.

OGB

In reply to Re: Autogenerating usernames by Old_Gray_Bear
in thread Autogenerating usernames by EvanCarroll

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