Where does the user name come from?

[Randy O'Neal]

I have a user who happens to be Greek.  Out of deference to his privacy, I'm going to change his name.  His Greek name is Yiorgos, but in our active directory network and everywhere else, his name is George.  Ever since we first set up Jira/Confluence Cloud in our instance, his name has always shown up as George.  However... sometime in the past X days/weeks (we're not quite sure when this happened), the system started calling him by his given name - Yiorgos - and we can't figure out how or why.  Our A/D system still shows him as George, and we cannot figure out where/how Jira has figured out his given name.

I can't change his name within Atlassian as far as I can tell; Jira even shows both names - shows him as Yiorgos Galanis (George Galanis).  This is a complete mystery to me.

I've dealt with this one other time about a year ago; in order to get the user's name correct, I had to get his active directory name correct.  It seems Atlassian pulls the full name from A/D, or so I've concluded.

Is there a way for me to get his name fixed, i.e. changed to show as George rather than Yiorgos?  Can someone tell me definitively where/how Atlassian pulls the full name from?  I'm flat out of ideas at the moment.  Oh, BTW, I'm an org admin, so it would seem I ought to have sufficient permissions to pretty much do anything I want to do in Jira/Confluence, but in this case... nope.

Any/all help greatly appreciated!!

[Randy O'Neal · Accepted solution]

It appears we have Okta to thank for this behavior.  Since we use Okta to authenticate EVERYTHING, Okta is inserting itself into the picture and providing the full name to Atlassian; in this case, Atlassian isn't actually pulling the full name from Active Directory; rather, it is pulling the credentials from the authentication system, which happens to be Okta.

Okta only recently was switched to pull all credentials from our HR system as its single source of truth... which happens to be UltiPro.  Of all the systems and sources, only UltiPro has George's name listed as Yiorgos; even there, however, his preferred name is listed as George.  But, since UltiPro lists his legal name as Yiorgos - and this is where his W2's and other legal paperwork pulls from - it's unlikely George will choose to change his name only to resolve a nattering issue within Jira.

It's been an interesting issue to investigate.  It would seem that if you provide a PREFERRED NAME, the system ought to honor that and actually use your preferred name (hence the term PREFERRED)... but I guess that would make too much sense.

Thanks all for your help!

[John Funk]

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the update!

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

Hi, @Randy O'Neal 👋

Unless I'm missing something, this is done at id.atlassian.com by the user, not the Jira administrator.

The field that needs to be changed is the Public name field.

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Hope this helps,

-dave

[Dave Rosenlund _Trundl_]

P.S. However, I'm confused about how this changed in the first place unless perhaps George did it without realizing the implications.

[John Funk]

Hi Randy,

Like Dave I am baffled how the change could happen outside of the user changing it himself. You should open a support ticket with Atlassian - surely they could tell you how it was changed.

[Randy O'Neal]

OK, @John Funk , I've been out on leave for the past 12 weeks; I can't remember how to open a support ticket.  My Google searches are finding looping references... and I cannot find the actual location where I can open a ticket.  Any chance you can point me in the right direction?

[John Funk]

What did Support say?

[Randy O'Neal]

They said there's nothing they can do... that the Full Name is pulled straight from A/D.  They are speculating that for a brief time, someone updated the first name in A/D, that was subsequently cached, and it was changed back, but the cache wasn't "busted".

Their recommendation was to implore the local I/T A/D folks to go out and change George to George, and hope that the change will bust the cache and re-propagate the desired name.

They confirmed I cannot change the full name... which really sounds short-sighted to me.  The proposed solution sounds bogus, but I guess it's worth a try.  I'll let you know how it goes...

[Randy O'Neal]

So, going here does give you the ability to alter the Public Name, but the Public Name shows George; the Full Name shows Yiorgos, and when I hover over that field, it shows a message stating that the Full Name is set by the admin; there's no way to change it.  So, George could not have changed it himself.