Customize appearance of names in user picker

Tom_Hendricks

We are finding many instances where there are multiple users with identical names in the user pickers, and it is difficult to select the correct one without opening the search window.

If we could customize them to show as "LastName, FirstName (UserName)" or "LastName, FirstName (Office)", for example, this would eliminate the problem.

Could this be a setting in the admin configuration, perhaps?

Adam_Dzyacky

I've personally distinguished multiple internal accounts by Display Name so that in user pickers their difference stands out a bit more. So at the very least what I think would be worthwhile is an indicator of whether or not the user came from an Active Directory connector. This at the very least would distinguish an internal account from an Exchange Connector externally created account.

If both users are from AD and the display name workaround doesn't suffice (because I would entirely understand someone saying "I don't like that my Cube number is in my name" or some other qualifier), you could perhaps do something like show the organizational unit they are a part of as a tooltip/hint or something.

Tom_Hendricks

In our case, I can't modify the names in AD and I need the CI's to match what is in AD.

The tooltip would be fine, but I think it would be simple enough to show DisplayName + (Office) in the dropdown list, instead.  The value is the GUID, which would not be affected by this change.  This seems like a really easy way to handle this.

Adam_Dzyacky

+1 it is.

Leigh_Kilday

We have many users with accounts across multiple domains and they all appear the same. The UPN or domain fields would work for us.

Tom_Hendricks

Leigh_Kilday said:

We have many users with accounts across multiple domains and they all appear the same. The UPN or domain fields would work for us.

I think this is a great example of why this should be configurable.  My example might not differentiate users for you, where as your example would not differentiate them for me (the users with the same names are in the same domain and their UPN, while different, would not positively ID them for me).

Letting portal admins define a name format string that is constructed from available User object properties seems to me like the way to make this a quick win for everyone.

john_doyle

@Tom_Hendricks from release 8.2.0 you can add the email address to the names displayed by the autocomplete control. Here's the code for the Incident form:

app.custom.formTasks.add('Incident', null, function (formObj, viewModel) {
    formObj.boundReady(function() {
        $('input.input-userpicker').data('kendoAutoComplete').setOptions({template: "#: data.Name # (#: data.Email#)"});
    });
});

Tom_Hendricks

Thanks for the heads-up!  I will definitely look into implementing this.

David_Wells

Thanks for this @john_doyle this helps us no end.

I've got this working in test however it seems to only work on the "Affected User" people picker not other people pickers of the same input-userpicker class such as "Assigned To". Only difference with these inputs appears to be the filterbyanalyst property.

Is this the same for others? Any ideas on how to get it working on the other inputs? 

David_Wells

So with my very limited JS skills here is the solution to get it working on all pickers:

app.custom.formTasks.add('Incident', null, function (formObj, viewModel) {
    formObj.boundReady(function() {
        $('input.input-userpicker').each(function(){
            $(this).data('kendoAutoComplete').setOptions({template: "#: data.Name # (#: data.Email#)"});
        });
    });
});

David_Wells

Next challenge, have similar functionality for the "Reviewers" picker and "Activity Implementer" picker in RA and MA's