w CalAgenda Tips: Is your CalAgenda User Name unique? What to do if it isn't

iNews: General IST services and support

CalAgenda Tips: Is your CalAgenda User Name unique? What to do if it isn't

Sarah Jones, IST-WSS

CalAgenda logo "CalAgenda Tips" is a regular feature of iNews for people on campus who are using the CalAgenda online calendar service (http://calagenda.berkeley.edu/) or just want to learn more about the service. Not all topics will be of interest to all readers; some topics may be too basic for some readers and others too technical, but we hope to address the concerns and issues of as broad a segment of the campus community as possible. If you have suggestions for topic ideas, please send email to

The problem

Your name is Susan Johns and you've been using the CalAgenda service for a while. Today, you started logging into your account with your desktop client as usual. However, when you enter "Susan Johns" in the User Name field, a dialog box comes up asking you to choose whether you want "Susan Johns" or "Susan Johnsen" before you can get into your account. What happened? Your user name "Susan Johns" worked yesterday. To complicate matters, you use a Palm device, and it does not offer you a dialog box to choose the User Name "Susan Johns", so now you cannot sync your Palm calendar. How can you fix these problems?

What's happening?

Until yesterday, the name "Susan Johns" was unique. Today, however, those same letters point not only to Susan Johns, but also to Susan Johnsen, a new subscriber who was added to the calendar system last night. That's because the letters in "Susan Johns" are a subset of the letters included in "Susan Johnsen". The system searches for account user names that match the letters entered and brings up a list of all such matching accounts from which you are to select your account. This allows users to avoid entering whole names or to find someone if they are not sure of the whole name. So, one of your problems is that your name is part of another name and thus is no longer unique. Another is that while desktop clients will pull up a list of matching accounts from which to choose your account, the Palm client will simply fail to log you in or give you error messages.

Oracle Calendar client

Last version

New version

Windows

9.0.4.1

9.0.4.2

Macintosh

9.0.4.1

9.0.4.2

Motif for Linux

9.0.4.1

9.0.4.2

Motif for Solaris

9.0.4.1

9.0.4.2

Palm for Windows

9.0.4.1

9.0.4.2

Palm for Macintosh

9.0.4.1

9.0.4.2

Pocket PC

9.0.4.1

9.0.4.2

OutLookConnector

9.0.4.11

9.0.4.2

Web

9.0.4

9.0.4.2

Solutions

Susan has a choice of two workarounds for this problem using her current User Name, "Susan Johns", which the system thinks is no longer unique. Both of these solutions require the database administrator to make a change to her account information. She can ask her CalAgenda departmental support person to request these changes for her.

  1. She can start using her middle initial if it will make her name unique again. Susan's middle name is Nancy, so she can ask that her middle initial "N" be added as part of her User Name. She can either use her full name or try something shorter. She can try entering only some of the letters of her name in the User Name field when she accesses her account to determine the fewest letters she needs to type in the field and still have enough letters for the system to identify her unique name.

    For instance, she can try typing "Susan N", but there may be another Susan N on the system so this is still not unique. She can try "S N Johns" or other combinations until she finds a combination that works for her.
  1. She can request that her Socrates or CalMail email user name be used. Susan can ask to use her email username "susanj".

What is important is to use something that is easy to remember and once again unique for her User Name.

As for the Palm problem, since the Palm cannot handle nonunique names, Susan will need to enter her complete name, "Susan N Johns".

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