Preferred names
When user accounts are created or updated in Brightspace through a Student Information System (SIS) integration, each user's legal first and last name are used. However, some users may want to use preferred names that are distinct from their legal names. For example, a transgender user with a different first name or a user commonly known by their middle name.
From the Manage Users tool, administrators can define a preferred first and last name for a user that appears everywhere in Brightspace, in place of the legal name. For example, the Classlist tool, discussions, their personal navbar, assignment submissions, and reports. A user's legal name is then only visible from the Edit User page.
Note the following:
- Site administrators must grant the new User Information Privacy > Distinguish Preferred Names from Legal Names permission at the organization level to other administrators that require access to view and modify preferred names. The ability to edit user information is controlled by existing Manage Users permissions.
- Administrators with access to the Users tool and the respective permissions can manage preferred names.
However, administrators can also manage preferred names through various integrations, such as IPSIS products (D2L Standard CSV 2.0, LIS 2.0, ILP), the Brightspace Developer Platform API, and Bulk User Management.
- This feature does not include the ability to define preferred user names. More specifically, adding a preferred name does not update an existing username. For example, adding Beverly as the preferred first name does not update the existing Ben.Smith username to Beverly.Smith.
- End users (instructors and learners) cannot define their preferred names and should refer to their institution's defined process for changing names.
- Name searches return preferred names instead of legal names.
- Any existing workflow that updates a user’s first or last name, like SIS integrations, updates their legal names. For users without a defined preferred name, this behavior is unchanged. For users with a defined preferred name, that preferred name is unaffected, because the SIS integration changed only their legal name “behind the scenes”.
Pronouns and Gender
Currently, there are two ways to set a user’s pronouns (e.g. he/his, she/her, or they/them). The user can set their pronouns using Account Settings or, if the pronouns are already set in a system of record, the pronouns can be set using an API. The user must select the Allow others to see my pronouns check box in the Account Settings > Pronouns area for their pronouns to appear. Users ultimately have control over whether their pronouns are displayed.
To enable pronouns for your organization, you must set the d2l.Settings.EnablePronouns (Org) configuration variable to ON. Once this configuration variable is enabled, the Pronouns area appears under Account Settings for all users.
To display pronouns in the Classlist for a course, you must set the d2l.Tools.Classlist.DisplayPronouns configuration variable to ON for the org unit.
To allow users to choose their own pronouns, enable the Account Settings > Set My Pronouns organization level permission.
Users can set the optional gender field to their preferred gender by manually entering their gender. The gender field is available in the optional Users - Contact Information function that is enabled through Bulk User Management at the admin level.
The gender field can be included within BulkUserCreate, BulkUserImport, and BulkUserUpdate CSV functions when configured using Form Elements.
The gender field defaults to OFF. To enable the gender field, update the form element setting Is Displayed for BulkUserCreate, BulkUserImport, and BulkUserUpdate from OFF to ON and set the required state as needed.
To view the pronouns of other users in the profile card and Classlist, users must have the User Information Privacy > See Pronouns permission.
To set the pronouns using the API and not allow users to set their own pronouns, refer to the pronoun calls in the Users API.