idea Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username in ArcGIS Online Ideas

Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

GenevieveMontpetit — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 22:54:18 GMT

As an org administrator, I would like to be able to update a username instead of the current workaround which is to create a brand new user and move all content from the old to the new user.

Use cases:

A username contains a typo
Person changing last name
The organization short name is modified in the org's settings, and several user accounts reference the old short name (e.g. jsmith_myorg should now be jsmith_neworg for clarity)

Workaround details from Esri support: http://support.esri.com/en/technical-article/000011984

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

PaulMorris1 — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 16:32:01 GMT

My organization was recently acquired by another and it would be great to have a way to change the usernames to reflect the new organization without deleting and remaking all the accounts.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

SeanSweeney — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 19:09:39 GMT

The other use for this would be with Enterprise Logins (Single Sign-On). AGOL automatically generates a username consisting of the users email address followed by an underscore and a suffix, but since the email address must be unique already it would be cleaner and easier to remember if the username was just the email address.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

Nicole_Ueberschär — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 05:37:02 GMT

I very much support this idea! At the governmental institutions we work with, people in certain positions change often. Still they want personalized user names (understandable) and not the name of a position. All users are also in use so I cannot use the workaround through creating a new user.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

ChrisDonaldson — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 09:39:13 GMT

I too strongly support this idea. Changing user names is a very requirement within my organization.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

MegHoole — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 22:35:39 GMT

Any movement on this Esri - it would be handy.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

RobbHodges — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 17:32:05 GMT

Also on board with this idea. We've had users get married (or the other way around). Changing the user name would be easier than recreating everything.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

JohnSchweisinger — Tue, 05 Feb 2019 17:41:36 GMT

I understand why ESRI cannot do this... since each user is used to save data, maps, and apps. Any change in name would break all the links. You can, however, make a new user and use the ArcGIS Online Assistant to transfer over the data, maps, and apps. This process will rewrite the links. Its a pain but is necessary the way the servers act.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

MichaelSchoelen — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 19:02:24 GMT

The best way would be for a behind the scenes script.

Front end admin sees: `Are you sure you want to change the username?`. If they click yes, the following happens:

If user name is changed:

Create new user account in the organization

Change ownership of all existing items

Migrate group ownership and membership

Migrate privileges and licenses

Delete old user account

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

deleted-user-1_r2dgYuILKY — Wed, 12 Jun 2019 17:50:54 GMT

Yes! And make it easier to delete old accounts, transfer user names and change primary emails. I've had to spend time on the phone with tech support to do all of these things.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

JamieLambert — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 16:13:39 GMT

Following on from a question asked in the 'ArcGIS Online: Q&A with the Product Team' session at the UC2020; Sentha Sivabalan‌ the idea to change a username has been around since late 2017. Do you know if this is on the current roadmap? Thanks, Jamie.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

BillFox — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 15:44:40 GMT

on the content piece,

maybe with the SSO with SAML or similar options you turn this on its head,

once data is created and put into production for the organization to use,

change ownership on it to match something like AD security groups = Portal/AGOL group,

such as a Portal/AGOL user to be that groups content "Publisher"/"Owner",

then what you see is what you get,

on the name changes piece,

AD/DNS/Portal/AGOL has enough "ghost" type issues already.

just managing the items now can get corrupted without trying to script more low level pointers.

voting up but with an abundance of caution for potential BUG type disastrous results

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

KevinMacLeodCAI — Sat, 19 Jun 2021 17:20:36 GMT

It sounds like the system uses the username as the primary key.. I wonder if they created the equivalent of a GlobalID and then joined that to username in the backend, could the username then be changed?

On a related note, there was another challenge when I was in emergency management for disaster response. We had a script to generate hundreds of user names (we had an Esri DR agreement). Great functionality and it worked well! We needed it since we couldn't have hundreds of usernames just created and parked indefinitely. It created them on the fly as needed based on people's names. And a lot of people have been and will continue to be there for a long time. So when it creates the name it ends up adding a number, if it already created a username for them last time, since apparently even if a user is deleted it's never really deleted, and you can't re-use the name. During hurricane recovery it was a challenge to track down which number (1, 2, or 3 etc) went after each user's username, when re-issuing everyone login credentials.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

RichardHoweRSKECO — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 09:24:28 GMT

Such an easy win this. Get it sorted please

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

JamesShreeve — Thu, 17 Nov 2022 15:18:53 GMT

As an administrator I think these enhancements are a must. Our organisations name has changed recently and needs changing (this is currently in the usernames) as well as a few cases of name changes. Having to re-assign all the content, create a new user, re-assign the content to a new user is incredibly cumbersome.

I find it crazy that this post is 5 years old and there is still no movement from Esri to enable administrators of an organisation to do simple username changes.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

ChelseaRozek — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 18:56:35 GMT

Please implement this. I had to change my first username today as both their first and last name has changed and was surprised to see that this still isn't possible to do. Luckily, they only had a couple of items and was a straightforward switch, but it could get complicated fast if they had many folders of items and were in lots of groups.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

SamBrown2 — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 18:50:37 GMT

Agree with this and the biggest problem with transferring content which I don't see being mentioned here is with content shared directly with a user directly or external groups they belong to.

This means first identifying what content and groups they have been invited to and then chasing the owners or someone with permission to share and asking them to share to the new user name. This is potentially asking clients or suppliers to do work to support our internal administration.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

Anonymous User — Wed, 19 Apr 2023 15:32:47 GMT

Esri, @KoryKramer , please push this issue to your very intelligent software developers and programmers.

There is no way this should be impossible. My esri user name isn't just tied to AGOL. It is embedded in Esri - my.esri, the community, my organization account, content, settings, who knows where else. I can't just make a new user name and transfer AGOL content.

1) My user name is a security problem - it is my old last name. I don't want that public anymore, shared with the world. It's been 15 years.

2) The AGOL users of my organization are very confused - who is this "xxusername" that created this web map? I have to explain..."that's me. See, Esri doesn't allow me to change my user name so you have no idea who made all of these maps. And therefore, who to go to to request changes and updates." "That's insane", they say.

3) In a culture where the woman is (usually) the one who changes her name upon marriage and sometimes on dissolution of marriage, this strikes me as a sexist policy where "the system" can't allow you to change your user name. Well, let's change the System. (I realize this bullet point might be a bit of a reach, but this is how it feels to me. So I'm willing to bet, I'm not the only one who feels this).

Thank you.

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

EricG — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 12:25:03 GMT

I would second this @KoryKramer.

We live in an era where Operational Security requires password changes every six months. It would seem the user community as a whole would benefit from the added ability to change ArcGIS Online UserNames.

Respectfully Submitted,

Eric

Re: Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

StephenHalstead — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 09:09:41 GMT

Just fix this