Maiden name or Former legal name field?
Good day,
I am wondering how administrators manage students that change their legal name, e.g. in the case of marriage. Is there an option for a Maiden name field or Former legal name for accounts?
Often when students get married, they inform the administration of a legal change but then say they don't mind keeping their Brightspace and email using their maiden name. We need to update the legal name but feel some connection may get lost by not having a space to put either maiden or former legal name.
We use the Preferred field for cases where students prefer to be addressed with a first or last name that differs from their legal name. So this field is not appropriate for former legal names.
We cannot force newly married students to update their accounts to their legal name if we don't require all students to do the same.
Thoughts? Options? Current practices?
Many thanks!
Bev
Answers
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Hi Beverly,
Typically the formal user/staff/student identities are managed in the institutions 'system of record' such as a HRMIS, SIS and so forth. In doing so, as a downstream application/system from these, Brightspace user information is updated aligning with institutional policy.
For a lot of clients, in addition to the 'standard' fields available the optional fields discussed in the following community resource cover their needs
There is an additional field available in a users profile, SortLastName. Its intended purpose is discussed here
You could investigate the feasibility of using this field for the use case you're trying to meet. This value can be populated directly in the UI or through the API.Hope that helps!
