Use this topic to understand how preferred names, pronouns, and the optional gender field work in Brightspace, and what you must enable to support them.
At a glance
- Preferred names are set by administrators (or integrations) and display broadly across Brightspace.
- Pronouns are enabled by administrators. Users can set and display them if you allow it.
- Gender is an optional user profile field you enable through Bulk User Management configuration.
Preferred names
What preferred names do
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 across Brightspace in place of the legal name (for example, in Classlist, discussions, the personal navbar, assignment submissions, and reports). A user's legal name is visible only on the Edit User page.
Ways to manage preferred names
- Manage Users (administrator UI)
- SIS/integration workflows (for example, IPSIS products: D2L Standard CSV 2.0, LIS 2.0, and ILP)
- Brightspace Developer Platform API and bulk processes (for example, Bulk User Management)
Important notes
- To allow other administrators to view and modify preferred names, grant User Information Privacy > Distinguish Preferred Names from Legal Names at the organization level. The ability to edit user information is controlled by existing Manage Users permissions.
- Preferred names do not change usernames. 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 follow your organization's process for changing names.
- Name searches return preferred names instead of legal names.
- Any workflow that updates a user’s first or last name (for example, SIS integrations) updates the legal name. 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 changes only the legal name behind the scenes.
Pronouns
What pronouns do
There are two ways to set a user’s pronouns (for example, he/his, she/her, or they/them): the user can set pronouns in Account Settings, or pronouns can be set using an API or integration if they already exist in a system of record.
Users control whether pronouns display by selecting Allow others to see my pronouns in Account Settings. When pronouns are enabled and visible, they can appear in the profile card and Classlist.
What you must enable
- To enable pronouns for your organization, set the d2l.Settings.EnablePronouns (Org) configuration variable to ON. After you enable it, the Pronouns area appears in Account Settings for all users.
- To display pronouns in Classlist, set the d2l.Tools.Classlist.DisplayPronouns configuration variable to ON for the org unit.
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Note: If pronouns are visible in Classlist, they are included when you print or export the Classlist. |
Permissions
- To allow users to set their own pronouns, enable the Account Settings > Set My Pronouns organization-level permission.
- To view the pronouns of other users in the profile card, Classlist, and printed or exported Classlists, users must have the User Information Privacy > See Pronouns permission.
API
To set pronouns using the API and not allow users to set their own pronouns, refer to the pronoun calls in the Users API.
Gender
Users can optionally provide a gender value by manually entering it, if your organization enables the field. The gender field is available in the optional Users - Contact Information function that you enable through Bulk User Management.
- 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 it, update the form element setting Is Displayed for BulkUserCreate, BulkUserImport, and BulkUserUpdate from OFF to ON and set the required state as needed.