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name display consistency

Susan Ott

There are tons of ideas posted that have to do with how names are displayed throughout the system and all seem valid but none seem to have been deemed important enough to address. There is an inconsistency that is driving me mad. The issue has to do with preferred name (previously nickname). I constantly get complaints about how someone's name is appearing somewhere - especially faculty. You can't choose preferred name for faculty to show on report cards but you can choose preferred name for students. You can choose preferred name to display in the directory for everyone. I have no control over how faculty names display on schedules and the progress tabs. The username format applies to the directory and rosters but nothing else. The options for controlling how names display are different depending on what part of the system you're working in. A student can look at their class roster and see the faculty's nickname and last name but if they go to their progress tab, the faculty name is first name last name. We need the same options for name display throughout the entire system. With the change from nickname to preferred name, will these options for display also change?

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Comments

Brian Gray

I agree - it seems like an obvious oversight. There is an related entry in the idea bank for Official Notes: https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-1696

Nancy Cunningham

Very well said, Susan, and thank you for your post. I totally agree, the inconsistencies throughout the system in how names are displayed combined with not having any control over it is an ongoing issue and frustration.

John Ronan

I would further add that the presence of various components of names are inconsistent as well.

For example, in one type of list [I can't remember which one; and they're all different], you CANNOT choose individual first and last name fields. You must choose 'student name', which prevents all kinds of useful sorting, distinguishing, etc. And you run into ambiguity: we have a couple cases of two students with the same "<first name> <last name>" value.

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

I echo your concerns!

Additionally, has anyone found a way to have parents decide how their formal, informal, and email salutations read? Ours are all over the map.

Susan Ott

As I mentioned earlier, there are tons of ideas all surrounding the issue of user name display throughout the system. I decided to compile a list and it is longer than I thought. When you look at the combined list, it seems obvious that how a user's name displays and the options for controlling that display is problematic for many, many schools - whether it is in directories (public and private), rosters (public and private; academic and athletic), contracts, forms, admission applications, official notes, pushpages, search function, committee review...I'm sure I've left a few off. This issue is system-wide and I wonder if product managers only see the ideas related to their product instead of the bigger picture of user name display overall. Some of these ideas are 5 years old. Instead of looking at the votes for a single idea, take the sum total of all the ideas surrounding user name display (541 VOTES) and it screams "this is a problem that needs addressing". Here's a list of the ideas from a search of "user name", "preferred name", and "nickname".

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2707 Team Roster page should display student Preferred Name and Last Name like class roster pages

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OC-I-612 Usernames on Rosters should Honor User Name Format

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2114 Ability to use nickname instead of first name in upper-right hand display name

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2142 Hide users first name in people finder

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1359 Parent Student Directory with Student Name report - Parent Nicknames?

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-937 Preferred Name for Users to Display on Website

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1372 Ability to have the User Name Format be different depending on the form

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OC-I-130 Use Preferred Name when students post to a discussion board

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-685 No Quotes Around Nickname

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OB-I-1388 Please add Candidate Nickname to Placeholders for Visit/Interview Notifications

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1284 Add nickname as option on "user regarding" block

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-341 Help with Bio/Affinity - nickname

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-389 Pushpage NickName first then First Name

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-762 Conduct placeholder to use Nickname and if no nickname exists then First name

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1640 Don't display nickname if it is identical to first name

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-752 Add {nickname|firstname} placeholder in Pushpage

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OB-I-1671 Committee Review needs to display nicknames.

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1307 I would like consistency on when Name and Nickname are used

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-2105 Student nickname to show in both groups and classes and not different from each.

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1008 Searching for nickname and last name should return a result

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OC-I-1132 In the Display Options, add student nickname as a field

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K120B-I-416 Use Core Settings Placeholder for nickname|firstname throughout

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-840 Remove quotes from nicknames on the Directory widget using Styles.

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-928 Add quotes around nicknames of employees in public directory

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1513 Ability to have Nickname display in the Relationships section of the contact card

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-2178 Allow students to choose nickname as displayed name in discussions

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-1338 Have quotes show /not show around nicknames on the Directory widget

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-1202 Add nickname to display dropdowns for styles under Detail Page

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-924 Ability to Display Nickname or First Name on Front End Directory - under consideration

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-1696 Change Official Notes Author to use Nickname, not first name

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OC-I-1148 Option to Display First Name in Gradebook - under consideration

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-749 Add nickname as a display option for coaches on the Team Detail block style

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2480 Option to Display Teacher First Name in Roster by Default Instead of Nickname

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-559 Add Nickname override First Name option for Affinity Group style

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-802 Allow a style to select whether the first name or nickname should appear in the Team Roster

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OC-I-58 Roster Should Honor User name Format - under consideration

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1442 User base: Add a firstOrNick field

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-830 I would like more display options in the Style for Department Faculty - planned

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OB-I-441 Add Parent First Name, Student Nickname and Student First Name placeholders to Re-Enrollment notifications

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1329 Must have ability to hide First Name in Directory!

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2517 Ability to format how parents view student names.

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1947 Addresses and Legal names on Student Medical Contact Cards

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OC-I-873 Keep Student Name Consistent between Roster and Discussion featur

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-533 Athletic Roster enhancement

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-1339 Public Website Display of Athletic Rosters and Names

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-341 Alumni Year appended to name

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1678 I would like to be able to specify an alternate name for a user in the system

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-1808 Publish Nickname + Surname on Report card

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OB-I-1544 Change the Nickname header to preferred name

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OB-I-740 We would like an enhancement to include a Preferred Name Field for siblings on the application.

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-1251 Allow parents to enter additional name fields for oB event forms

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2484 Add conditional tokens for mail merge

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OB-I-25 Candidate names in onBoard

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OR-I-1752 Allow teachers to rearrange students in their gradebook on a custom basis (like FAWeb allowed)

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2090 option to display (not update) the student's first and last name in a user profile update form (school form)

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-1736 Change Nickname to Preferred Name in Profile

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OM-I-489 Ability to change Athletics Roster Names on front end website

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2538 We would like the 'Nickname' field to display in the 'User Regarding' block of school forms. MERGED

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12OB-I-230 nicknames in admissions profile MERGED

https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-2782 Preferred Name in School Forms (LMS/SIS/EMS) MERGED

Julie Horvath

Further inconsistency is that Preferred Name (directory, Contact Card) = Nickname in Pushpage.

Janet Wittenberg

Susan Ott‍ You really are a saint. Your time spent on this will not be wasted, I really appreciate you organizing it and I'll do what I can to move this forward. For awhile we were waiting for a one-Blackbaud solution to leverage what is also in RE NXT, but at this point I'm more likely to solve it for Education on our own.

Six of them were implemented in our changes in May 2020, and there are another several in progress.

Janet

Susan Ott

Thanks Janet - you are always so responsive and it is much appreciated. I knew some of the ideas had already been implemented but included everything to show how widespread the issue is. For us it is largely the inconsistency of how faculty names display on rosters vs. the progress tab vs. report cards vs. schedules (and our lack of control over it) and the fact we can't control how the public directory displays. The recent change with allowing preferred name to display for coaches on the public website was a great step forward. However, it brought up another issue. We have always populated the (previously named) nickname field ONLY if the name was different than their first name because we don't like names to display as Susan "Susan" Ott in the faculty/staff directory. To have the coaches display properly on the team pages with preferred name, I had to populate that field for everyone with the coach role. Looks great for the team pages but now the directory is showing the Susan "Susan" Ott format for those coaches without a true nickname. Being able to control how the public directory displays would be huge. I'm sure some schools want the more formal first name/last name combo or like the first name/"preferred name"/last name display as it is now. It seems the only way to make everyone happy is to put that control for how all user names display in our hands. I also realize there may be way more involved in making that happen on the programming side than we could know; however, since some areas of the website already give that option (like the user name format - Core->Users->User Profile Settings->User name formats) I'm hoping it isn't as difficult as I fear. Again, thank you for your quick response!

Elizabeth Perron

Susan Ott‍

I echo Janet Wittenberg‍'s comments that your work is valued!

I have given you 5000 points as a Community Thank you!

Elizabeth

Blackbaud Community Team

Lori MacConnell

I would just like to echo the importance of giving schools control of how the names are displayed throughout the site. With the recent preferred name changes that were implemented, certain areas now only show the preferred name. While I agree that this is better than showing Joe "Joe" Smith, it does cause confusion when the preferred name is so drastically different than the given name. Displaying Joe "Zeke" Smith leaves no room for confusion about who the child is; whereas if you're looking for Joe Smith and you just see Zeke Smith, you can easily mistake that for another student.

Thank you for considering this!

John Ronan

Hear! Hear!

Customizability of stuff like how a student's name is displayed would be *very* useful.

Susan Ott

I'm bringing this discussion back to life. While significant changes were made - many thanks to @Janet Wittenberg for spearheading - there are still some glaring issues. I get hammered by teachers that DO NOT want their first name showing to students and parents. We have our user name options set to display preferred name. Unfortunately, that setting does not apply to all locations that names appear. From a student perspective, they see first name of a teacher on their schedule, preferred name on the roster, first name on the class page details, preferred name in the directory, first name on report cards. I totally understand our teachers' frustration but I need to keep our data clean and abide by our data policies and retain the legal first name in the first name field. PLEASE, can we make all name displays adhere to the user name format?

971296148524272706bf788bb33f702e-origina

Megan Day

Just seconding this request here, again. Currently noticing that the new seating charts for teachers only display students' first names and there is no way to set them to “Nickname”. Hope this gets resolved before the updates coming down the road that will let teachers take their attendance from the seating chart.