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Why has my name changed?

By Tim J Purkiss, on 23 January 2013

If you notice that your name details have unexpectedly changed in any of the following places:

  • The UCL Directory
  • Live@UCL e-mail display name and Global Address List
  • Moodle
  • IRIS: Institutional Research Information Service
  • RPS: Research Publications Service
  • Other systems that use data from UPI.

it may be because of a change in the way your data is supplied from central UCL systems.  This issue will only affect a small number of people, where anomalies in the underlying data are exposed, but if you’re amongst them, contact the UPI Support Team (via upi@ucl.ac.uk) or the ISD Service Desk and we will update your display name preferences accordingly.

More details: What’s behind the change?

The UPI System uses the unique identifier assigned to everyone associated with UCL to work out which system has the main person information (title, forenames, surnames, etc.). These details are combined with contact information and any display preferences and made available to other systems that need details of UCL people.

Previously, UPI would just look at which systems held the person record and used a simple hierarchy of these systems: the HR system, Portico  and the Services System. Problems could occur where people had records in more than one of these systems but with different data in each, for example a student who is also a casual employee. In this case, the record in the HR system would be used by UPI as the source of the name information, even though the individual’s main association to UCL was as a student.

The change will mean UPI will use the record from the system where a person has the most appropriate current association (so, to give another example, if a member of staff leaves then later returns as a student, UPI will now use the student record rather than always using the HR record).

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