Jira Copy-on-first-login is changing users' names

Andrew Culver
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December 4, 2013

We've been using Jira for a couple of years now and had a few hundred users in Jira under our deligated authentication directory to LDAP.

About a month ago, I enabled the copy-on-first-login option, so new users will be copied from LDAP the first time they login, if they don't already exist. I've started to notice that some of our existing users' names within Jira are being updated with the values from LDAP's cn attribute.

It's usually minor, like changing Ed to Edward, or adding a middle initial that wasn't included when they were manually added. But why did enabling copy-on-first-login cause Jira to start changing names for existing users??

Thanks,
Andrew

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Andrew Culver
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December 3, 2014

I believe I opened a case with Atlassian and was told this is just how it works. The name and email attributes are copied from LDAP on each login, not just the first. You just have to live with it.

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Jean-Paul December 3, 2014

Anyone know whether there is a workaround for this? Copy-on-first-login would enable a much more seamless way for users to first experience JIRA and remove the mundane job of dealing with user creation on an adhoc basis.

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Andrew Culver
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December 9, 2013

We have about 50,000 active users in our LDAP and only about 200 in Jira. Any of these users could potentially log in at any point in the future. If I disabled Copy-on-first-login, I'd have to enable full directory sync of all users or install Crowd.

Is there no option to make Copy-on-first-login mean what it says, and only copy on first login, and not every login? Is there a fix coming for this?

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Zul NS _Atlassian_
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December 9, 2013

Because of the mentioned issue, it is most likely will re-copy ever time the user logged in. I would suggest to disable the Copy-on-first-login feature after all users already logged in. User that is to be added in the future can be included manually via the Admin UI.

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Andrew Culver
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December 8, 2013

I used:

"ldap.user.firstname": "givenName"
"ldap.user.lastname": "sn"

Is there a fix or workaround?

I haven't tested, but does this re-writing from LDAP only happen to existing users on their first login after enabling copy-on-first-login? Ie, after they've now logged in once, can I edit it back and have it stick? Or will it re-copy the name from LDAP each time?

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Zul NS _Atlassian_
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
December 7, 2013

What did your configuration for "User First Name Attribute" says? Because of this issue, JIRA will not only copy users to be created on first login, but also copy users to be updated on next login.

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