Ability to change an ArcGIS Online username

[GenevieveMontpetit]

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

[BillFox]

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

[KevinMacLeodCAI]

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.

[RichardHoweRSKECO]

Such an easy win this. Get it sorted please

[JamesShreeve]

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.

[ChelseaRozek]

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.

[SamBrown2]

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. 

[Anonymous User]

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.

[EricG]

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

[StephenHalstead]

Just fix this

[PhilippNagel1]

I understand the reasoning as to why this is not currently possible to some degree, but at the same time, it seems like a very important features that should be standard in business environments. While it may not be possible with the way the system is built currently, it should be possible to change the AGOL backend to support this over time (and it has been some time since this was first raised). I don't think it's fair for ESRI to just say we will not address this due to the reasons our system is built, when they are the ones in charge of how the system is built and could change it accordingly.

This would help with a lot of things, like people changing names for"happy" both "sad"and reasons, organizations changing names, organizations changing login schemes (built-in to SAML), typos and mistakes, changing of username generation scheme in organizations, etc.

I see that most of the steps necessary to create a new user with a new name, and migrate old content and groups to the new user, can be automated, but not all. For example, group memberships in external groups cannot be transferred unilaterally from the home org, so this part cannot be automated. This is a big problem for large orgs.