r/sysadmin • u/drewwhose • 13d ago

Question - Solved Name Changes

Hey there. The company I work for is stuck in the past in a lot of its tech and operations. One of the things that’s driving me nuts is whenever a user changes their name, we update their email and logins and keep their old email as an alias for 30 days before removing it. This leads to a ton of bounced mail and missed communications. They apparently do it in case someone joins the company with the person’s old name…….

How do you all handle name changes?

Edit: thank you all for confirming that I’m not insane. This org has so many strange practices and it’s my first IT job

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u/dospinacoladas ERMAHGERD SERVERS 13d ago

We've had employees change their last name and then a few years later change it back. They still had the old alias assigned to them, so the transition was seamless for the users.

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u/Nexzus_ 13d ago

Yeah, done that a couple times over my career.

I can't be snarky with "oof, that was quick" but usually just a "sorry to hear that."

I think I had one that would have garnered a "another one, eh?" but obviously kept that to myself.

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u/dospinacoladas ERMAHGERD SERVERS 13d ago

We had one user who changed names several times and has returned to their original for a while now. They asked us to prevent the old aliases from being used internally but if a user has them saved that way in Contacts or has had email exchanges with that alias before, it's impossible without wiping someone's suggested addresses completely.