How can I ignore suggested username for new members

Question

I'm trying to create a couple of new members for our organization. The usernames must match a series the usernames that exist in another app. The problem is when I enter the username ArcGIS Online automatically overwrites the entered username with another suggestion, usually by appending numbers to the end.

So for example I want to create 'RoadCrew1' but ArcGIS Online overwrites it to 'RoadCrew14' as soon as I click out of the username text box. I cannot turn off these suggestions. I suspect that these usernames existed in our organization before but if so have been deleted. Is there any way to get these usernames back?

Answer 1

ArcGIS Online has a global shared name space for usernames

Ie, one global pool of usernames. The usernames must be globally unique, not just unique to your organisation.

Therefore you should never rely on any particular username being available. You should consider a username scheme that includes something about your organisation in each username. This would make it unlikely for the username to be already in use by another organisation or individual. ArcGIS Online does this for you initially when you enter the person's email address, it will take the part before the '@' and the first element after the '@' (before the first '.') and join them with an underscore. This is its default username scheme as in most cases, it will result in a username that has a person-specific component and a company-specific component.

Eg, from jon.smith@acme.com, it would default to the new username of "jon.smith_acme".

If the username you want to use is not available, it is most likely in use by another company or another individual.

There is a geonet discussion about some of the other issues that this causes here.

Enterprise Log Ins

Alternatively, you can configure ArcGIS Online to use federated logins so that it authenticates using your own company directory services (LDAP or Active Directory). Then you will be using your standard company usernames and passwords (or email addressess and passwords) and don't need separate credentials for ArcGIS Online at all.

See, Organization -> Settings -> Security -> Enterprise Logins

You can even use a combination of ArcGIS logins and Enterprise logins for different users (or even have both types of logins for a single user).