username vs SSO username fields

[SkyeHa]

Preface: we're on SSO. Context: some users have changed their names (and hence their email addresses and Federation ID has also changed) I have run a user report with three fields: username, email address and SSO username. The SSO username report field corresponds to the user's Federation ID field and the email address report field of course corresponds with the user's email address field. But what in heck does username correspond to? Why does it sometimes automatically change and other times appear to be stuck? In the user settings, it says "Email address (this will be the username)" -- yet I have 19 active users where email address and username are not the same. -skye

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Skye, Where we're now all used to using emails to log in to everything, back in the day, email address was different than username within Workfront (AtTask, at the time). If you log in to Workfront and then run an API query like this: https://[yourdomain].my.workfront.com/attask/api/v9.0/user/search?fields=username,emailAddr,ssoUsername in your browser's URL box, you'll see the same three fields you reported on also come back: but they are independent, allowing for that historic username / email separation. When new users are created ("going forward"), I believe that username and emailAddr are set to be the same. However, I've also observed that when certain Preview environments get refreshed, upon login, some (typically, "older") user names are then prompted with the following window, which I presume would then sync the emailAddr and username: Just spitballin', but... Perhaps if you attempted to log in via https://[yourdomain].my.workfront.com /login (to bypass SSO) as one of the users in question, the same window would appear, allowing you to then synchronize similarly. Regards, Doug Doug Den Hoed - AtAppStore Got Skills? Lend a hand! https://community.workfront.com/participate/unanswered-threads

[SkyeHa]

thanks Doug! I was thinking it was an old-vs-new account situation but then I found a user who had just been created this year, so that kind of nixed it. Some usernames are just... stuck. By the way, the fix is /login/convertUsername -- I am of course more interested in the WHHHHHYYYY than the fix. So thanks for the history lesson :) -skye

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hey Skye, Doug is pretty much spot on. The "username" field is for the Workfront (formerly AtTask) username. While this field should correspond with the user's email address, if your company had SSO set up and working prior to the user's account being created, the username field will populate with that user's ID, not their email. You can log in as that user and do the /login/convertUsername process for that user, but it's only to set their Workfront username. This is often done for admins, or for users that want to access Preview/SB01/SB02 and the test environment does not have SSO configured. I hope this info helps a bit more! Thanks, Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront

[SkyeHa]

Thanks Dustin! in this case, we have a situation where there is content in the username field that doesn't correspond with either the email address or the user's ID. It's a bit weird because I see the relationship in other user accounts where updating email address will update username, and then there are these 20 people where that hasn't happened. No relationship between them all--some are old accounts, and some are new. Just wondering if these accounts are corrupted somehow and whether that could account for other sporadic issues that have shown up (e.g. one of the users told me she couldn't update her last name). -skye

[EXP_-_DustinMa]

Hey Skye, Can you direct message me 2 or 3 of those users and I'll pull them up from our back end to see what it looks like from our side? I suspect the issue is that the username is populated with their GUID. I have seen one other client in 5.5 years that had users populate with other people's email addresses. It was such a weird issue, and one I've never seen happen again, though since I work with a small group of assigned clients, I can't speak to other support reps having seen it or not. Thanks! Dustin Martin Assigned Support Engineer Workfront