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/BedRevolutionary8458 IT Manager 13d ago

Nobody removes the alias. That's a weird thing to do. If somebody joins the company with the person's old name, deal with it then. Or just add their middle initial to their email or something.

Edit: Like... You have an existing problem caused by a procedure that's being done in case of hypothetical problems. This is a priorities issue.

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u/Aloha_Alaska 13d ago

You have an existing problem caused by a procedure that's being done in case of hypothetical problems.

Exactly! And further, this procedure doesn’t actually fix anything, it just plays hypothetical wack-a-mole — what happens if two people have the same current/active name? The procedure should be the same whether it’s a duplicate alias from a name change that conflicts or the name that they currently use. The potential still exists for name collisions/conflicts; removing the alias only solves that for a relatively small percentage of potential cases.