Rocket.chat: Ability to have "Display Name" which is different from username.

[Theaxiom]

This is especially helpful if you are utilizing a corporate LDAP/Active Directory which is setting your username to some obscure alphanumeric combination.

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[johnhug]

+1

[pioneer903]

+1 please

[yonkeltron]

+1 :+1:

[graywolf336]

Would the display name only be for display or would there be any additional uses for it?

[graywolf336]

Right now when you register, not sure about ldap, you set your name. Thereafter there was no way to actually change your name and so it was kind of useless. I just opened a pull request, #1211, which adds a field to the account profile where you can change that.

I'm wondering if there should be an option per user or site wide which sets whether the username or the _(real)_name is used on the messages list.

[Theaxiom]

@graywolf336 Thank you. :) I think you should be able to reference the display-name and it will auto-complete to the username when doing an @search in chat.

[graywolf336]

@Theaxiom I think it currently does search on the display-name (real name, name) when you go to mention someone.

[Theaxiom]

@graywolf336 You are absolutely correct, I believe it should be possible to show display names in channel instead of usernames. How feasible is this?

[graywolf336]

@Theaxiom Great question, I have not looked into that. I don't imagine it being extremely difficult though.

[engelgabriel]

This is a very tricky one, and we may have other old issue about the same feature.

The big thing here is: performance and scalability. Our data model is denormalized in favor of really high performance with low CPU and Memory usage. So we don't have the real names available on every message, as we have the username copied.

But we do understand that in small team, with less than 1k users, we could have a memory map for the real names, and that's what we will do. We will create an setting to turn that on, and recommend that large deployments keep that turn of.

[richardwlu]

:+1:

[LeCoupa]

:+1:

[noregard]

:+1:

[jdkcn]

:+1: I really want this feature.

[mjensemble]

:+1:

[gthorne]

:+1:

[tuudik]

:+1:

[onigoetz]

:+1:

[dandv]

@engelgabriel: that implementation is what I'd go for, too. Display names change so rarely, that it's not even worth subscribing to the mapping collection.

[NioTeX]

:+1:

[szilardd]

:+1:

[gevial]

:+1: It would be reallly convenient indeed.

[aNullValue]

Consider this another comment in agreement that this is needed. I'd work on it myself, if I had the time right now. :( My organization can't migrate to RocketChat, as our usernames are rather inconvenient; most other systems we use employ a description or "Display Name" for a user, rather than their username.

[mhisoft]

it is a must have.

[botboe]

This feature is very important for us too.

[ghost]

+1

[NoleHealth]

+9001

[twoutlook]

In Chinese environment, users have much sense on their Chinese name, display name, instead of username.

[meilinger]

:+1:

[BirknerAlex]

👍

[massl]

:+1:

[StClaus]

:+1:

[tuxBurner]

:+1:

[ksuquix]

+1

[mccunej]

+1

[pesektomas]

+1

[chey]

:+1:

[vladimirsazhin]

👍

[alexbrazier]

@engelgabriel Could we just add the name of the user to the database for each message so it will also work with larger organisations. The username is already stored in the db, and in most cases the username is about the same length as the name so it wouldn't take up much more space than already used as most of the data will be the message. I'm happy to give this task a go using this method.
This issue is also brought up here #3453

[zanshin]

+1
We've got a corporate LDAP and nearly 200 local users of Rocket.chat. Having real names instead of (or alongside) user accounts will be very beneficial.

[guenth]

+1

[csorrick]

+1

[alexanda1]

+1

[bhbarbosa]

+1

[sethiele]

+1

[Kenterfie]

+1

[schaenzer]

+1

[pramithkm]

+1

[tomeus]

+1

[resetko]

+1

[pacid]

+1

[himpich]

Setting "Administration" / "Messages" / "Set a user name to alias in message" to true I now get the "Name" displayed with messages - works for me. Thanks!

[zanshin]

I don't see that option. What version of RC are you on @himpich?

[himpich]

I am using stable release 0.36.0

[engelgabriel]

This has not being implemented on the master branch yet. We are working on it. We want to make in a way that we think is more inline with the architectural design of Rocket.Chat.

[justinmoninger]

+1

[jackivanov]

+1

[ToeBee]

I believe this is implemented and released now. We've been using it for a few weeks.

[jackivanov]

You are right. found here https://github.com/RocketChat/Rocket.Chat/pull/3337

[Theaxiom]

Shall I close this?

[zanshin]

I think you can. It's been working for some time now. :)

[aventrax]

Nice to have the "Name" instead of the username on the chat, anyway, we need this on the "mentions" too, otherwise the employees must remember the domain username of the collegues... in some case this is not an option: we use alfanumeric characters, not the name/surname...

Will this be implemented?

[aggregat4]

It is great that we can now show real names in messages, but in 0.41.0 where this landed, we can now no longer search for people by their real name. If you switch with CTRL+P or try to mention someone this only matches the username. This reduces usability enormously.

[d89]

+1

[rajsardhara]

+1

[MarIfla]

+1

[danielluchetta]

+1

[sychevsky]

+1

[dmanchev]

Yes please, this is important to have!

[rajsardhara]

@dmanchev This is closed already Follow this to enable:
Under message section : Set a user name to alias in message = "True"

[banholzer]

this works in messages but does this also work in "roster" ?

[fletc3her]

I'd really appreciate this. People choose bizarre usernames. It would be nice if we could tell who everybody was.