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Reformatting Displayname Values

Category:General

Last Updated:2011-08-11

 

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Normalizing Display Names

With multiple directories in your environment,  you may run into situations where the Display Name format is different between directories (i.e. one Directory uses a format of 'First Last' another directory uses a format of Last, First').

Or you may have a single directory in which the Displayname of all objects is inconsistent (some are First Last, others are Last, First).

#1 Syncing between two directories:

In a typical connection between two directories you may wish to reformat the  Displayname that  appears in your synced destination contacts.  To do this, select the desired Reformat Displayname Option (on the Display Name tab).  When the sync runs, your synced destination contacts will have their Displaynames reformatted to match the selected format.

#2 Normalizing the Displayname of a single Source directory:

You may have a single ldap directory in which the Displayname of objects are inconsistent (i.e. some are 'First Last' while others are 'Last, First').  In this case, you may wish to normalize the displayname so all Displaynames appear in the same format.

NOTE: Be very careful with this type of connection... as the Source/Destination of this connection are the same, you are overwriting your primary directory. If you do not configure properly and you hose Last/First/Displayname, there is no undo function.   It is highly recommended you run a HIGH level Simulation (Sync Disabled) and then review the Simulation log's Dest Entry to review your results are as desired before running a real sync to update your Displaynames.

To do this, you can configure a JOIN connection. The unique element of this connection is that the Source and Destination directories specified will be the same. 

  1. Create a connection as usual. On the Source and Destination tabs, specify the exact same IP/login info to identify the directory where you want to normalize displaynames.
  2. On the Source tab, select the desired Object Types.
  3. On the Displayname tab, select the desired Reformat option.
  4. Select a  Parse option of  YES or NO. If you specify Parse=YES, SimpleSync will break the original Display Name attribute into its component parts (First, Initials, Last) and use those values to rebuild the DisplayName into the desired format.   If you specify Parse=NO, SimpleSync will use the actual First Name, Initials, and Last Name attributes to build the new displayname.
  5. On the Destination tab, you must enable the 'Join with Existing Objects' function.  To do this, you must specify Source/Dest Indexes.  This will be used control the Join function. What attributes you chose depends on what Object Types you selected on the Source tab  If you are only using Object Type of AD Users, a good attribute to use for Source/Dest Index is userprincipalname. For Ex55 Mailboxes, a good Source/Dest index is UID.
  6. On the Destination tab, specify a single value in the 'Modify Attributes' parameter box. In AD the attribute would be specified as displayname. In Ex55 the attribute would be specified as cn. (This setting is very imporant because you only want to modify the Displayname attribute with this sync run.  You may also choose to create a Custom Object Map file.. and remove ALL mapping lines except DN and Displahyname. The custom map is not required as long as you specify the Modify Attribute, but it does offer further security against accidently modifying other attributes when this sync is run )
  7.  On the Destination tab, leave the Object Creation parameters blank.
  8. Click Apply.
  9. It is recommended you disable Sync and enable SIM (and high level logging). Run a Sim and review the Dest Entry in the Sim log to confirm results before running a real Sync.