I’m keen to move from a username login to a login that uses the registered email as the username login.
The system allows us to change the login to use the registered email address so I know I can tick that setting and it is swapped over. What I am keen to explore is the best practice steps in making this change.
User context: about 7000 users across 36 organisations, mix of user defined usernames and email addresses used already.
My thoughts and approach:
Create a Newsletter with a notice to all users we are changing to use the registered email as your username in 2 weeks on XXX day.
Newsletter will have clear instructions including the users current username and what their new username will be using the form fields
Send newsletter to all users, also add to the notifications for all users
On the day of the change make it very early before users are using the system.
Setup a “Header message” in the Configure branding look & Feel to explain that logins are now based on your registered email address - keep it for a few days only.
Keen to know if you feel this is sound or do you have some suggestions that might improve the approach? Any tips or things to watch out for?
Best answer by alekwo
@jckemvshould you decide to update usernames on all user accounts via a CSV, I’d suggest the following:
When sending the newsletter with the information about the upcoming change send it with a real email address in the FROM field - I mean, do not use any kind of not monitored or non-existing no-reply address. Of course don’t use your own mailbox, but rather create a dedicated address for that. With 7000 users, it’s more than likely that plenty of the email addresses are no longer valid or in use. It might be a tedious work, but after you delete out-of-office auto-responders you will have all of the bounced messages in a mailbox so you will be able to deactivate those accounts in Docebo cleaning up your database.
Before you begin, make the export of all users and check if there are any duplicates in the email column - with so many users, it’s possible that some people had created more than one account using the same email address. You will need to sort this first (e.g. merge duplicate accounts, deactivate those which are no longer needed, etc.), as you won’t be able to set two accounts with the same email as the username.
Once ready for the switch - create an additional filed in Docebo and populate it with current usernames before you start making any changes to actual usernames. This will later help you finding the right user in case people will have any issues and won’t remember which email address they used.
Before making the change - prepare a second CSV file, which, in case of any serious issues, would let you quickly restore the usernames to their previous state, so you will have a “safety net”.
Hi jckemv. Sorry if this is too obvious, but once you set the login to be via email address, old usernames will continue to work. I’m not aware of a way to force existing accounts to change. I assume you’d use a csv import to modify the usernames of the existing accounts?
As for your approach it seems good. You’ll always catch out users who haven’t taken notice of your newsletter so be prepared for a few “I can’t log in” emails!
Hi jckemv. Sorry if this is too obvious, but once you set the login to be via email address, old usernames will continue to work. I’m not aware of a way to force existing accounts to change. I assume you’d use a csv import to modify the usernames of the existing accounts?
As for your approach it seems good. You’ll always catch out users who haven’t taken notice of your newsletter so be prepared for a few “I can’t log in” emails!
Good feedback, I didn’t know the usernames would still work. Does it not force the “username” box to swap to email and therefore it wouldn’t take a username anymore?
I also found this in the Knowledge Base which is concerning to my plan.
My experience is that we used non-email usernames when setting up our platform and then switched to email addresses once we were ready to launch. All of those old accounts still work (mine included). I have also in the past briefly switched it off, created a test user with a simple username, and then switched it on again.
When you have email addresses for login and you’re creating a new user, just enter the email address in the email field and it gets replicated in the login field. But, existing users don’t change. The knowledgebase does seem to indicate differently.
You have a lot of users, but you should be able to export them all, create a csv with the email address as the login, then import the csv making sure to tick ‘update existing users’. The only catch with this is if the import doesn’t recognise these accounts as the primary identifier of the account (the user name) is different. It’s worth testing to see how that works.
Someone else might have deeper knowledge of this, but that’s what I’ve seen. And now you’ve got me too nervous to flick the switch again on my own platform to try this again
@jckemvshould you decide to update usernames on all user accounts via a CSV, I’d suggest the following:
When sending the newsletter with the information about the upcoming change send it with a real email address in the FROM field - I mean, do not use any kind of not monitored or non-existing no-reply address. Of course don’t use your own mailbox, but rather create a dedicated address for that. With 7000 users, it’s more than likely that plenty of the email addresses are no longer valid or in use. It might be a tedious work, but after you delete out-of-office auto-responders you will have all of the bounced messages in a mailbox so you will be able to deactivate those accounts in Docebo cleaning up your database.
Before you begin, make the export of all users and check if there are any duplicates in the email column - with so many users, it’s possible that some people had created more than one account using the same email address. You will need to sort this first (e.g. merge duplicate accounts, deactivate those which are no longer needed, etc.), as you won’t be able to set two accounts with the same email as the username.
Once ready for the switch - create an additional filed in Docebo and populate it with current usernames before you start making any changes to actual usernames. This will later help you finding the right user in case people will have any issues and won’t remember which email address they used.
Before making the change - prepare a second CSV file, which, in case of any serious issues, would let you quickly restore the usernames to their previous state, so you will have a “safety net”.
@jckemvshould you decide to update usernames on all user accounts via a CSV, I’d suggest the following:
When sending the newsletter with the information about the upcoming change send it with a real email address in the FROM field - I mean, do not use any kind of not monitored or non-existing no-reply address. Of course don’t use your own mailbox, but rather create a dedicated address for that. With 7000 users, it’s more than likely that plenty of the email addresses are no longer valid or in use. It might be a tedious work, but after you delete out-of-office auto-responders you will have all of the bounced messages in a mailbox so you will be able to deactivate those accounts in Docebo cleaning up your database.
Before you begin, make the export of all users and check if there are any duplicates in the email column - with so many users, it’s possible that some people had created more than one account using the same email address. You will need to sort this first (e.g. merge duplicate accounts, deactivate those which are no longer needed, etc.), as you won’t be able to set two accounts with the same email as the username.
Once ready for the switch - create an additional filed in Docebo and populate it with current usernames before you start making any changes to actual usernames. This will later help you finding the right user in case people will have any issues and won’t remember which email address they used.
Before making the change - prepare a second CSV file, which, in case of any serious issues, would let you quickly restore the usernames to their previous state, so you will have a “safety net”.
Much appreciated, great advice and I now have heaps to think about. Thanks and wish me luck.
You can do a CSV import to change the current username to the new username. Just make sure you also include the First and Last name fields (you can leave them blank during the import) for the CSV upload to work. Also, make sure to check the box “update for existing users.”
One thing to consider...If any of your users are not internal employees (i.e. customers), using their email address as their username can be a security issue when using the Coach and Share Feature. The Ask the Expert functionality and Invite to Watch functionality show other users their usernames. As a result, we will not be able to use the Coach and Feature feature for our external-facing domain. Just something to think about.
We are currently using email as username, but encounter issues when our employees change their name and therefore their email address. We haven’t been able to consistently get IT to include us in the email thread when the change is made, so the result is a duplicate account that isn’t discovered until we are sending “you’re overdue on compliance training” messages out and they can’t find what we’re talking about.
We’re using SSO, but I’d like to use employee ID as the username if we can, as it is the one piece of information that never changes throughout the employee lifecycle.
