Automated username generation

[micahcowan]

Adding usernames to the system is currently a bit of a pain, particularly for "staff" (coordinators, managers and the like are somewhat less of a problem, since they are fewer). A batch list-of-names to registered usernames feature would be very useful, even if we only make it work for Staff.

It's also a bit redundant: if you know the first/last name, you know what the username is already - the process could be automated. Care needs to be taken in the case of repeated first-initial/last-name combinations (siblings often join registration staff together).

In the case of a batch username registering tool, we could do that somewhat intelligently by using as many characters from the first name until you have a unique one for that last name. In the case that a username already exists/was generated before the current, might do the same, but (obviously) only for the new username. Might also have to fallback to something like tacking numbers at the end or something, as a last-ditch...

Could easily have a drop-down for Role type to create for the batch of users. But I'm not certain we want that - don't want to make it easily to add a bunch of directors automatically. At least, some care is probably warranted. Again, just supporting it only for Staff roles would be a bit help in itself.

[jashort]

I kind of like the idea of just having dropdown of all the Roles, a "create all these users" button, and a big text box where you could type names one per line. Being able to copy and paste the list from somewhere else (say, Google Docs) would probably be easier than making sure an input file is formatted correctly.

On creating usernames, that's a sticky problem just because it would be nice to have a consistent method ("first initial, last name" is easy to remember). I kind of like the idea of tacking a number on the end a little more. Though I guess either way won't be an issue 95% of the time.

One other consideration - if you're batch creating a bunch of users and it fails part way through, do you roll all of them back or keep some of them? (Importing attendees rolls the whole thing back and prints the line with a problem, since that's easier to clean up)

[micahcowan]

Big, line-separated text box is exactly what I had in mind :)

I think in this instance, creating every user it can, and passing over the ones it can't, probably makes the most sense. And perhaps re-presenting the text box, pre-filled in with the ones it couldn't do, along with a big fat error notice so we realize we didn't achieve complete success, and can edit out problems with the remaining names.

As you say, importing attendees makes sense as an atomic operation, because there the easiest way to fix problems is to fix it in the file and then try again with the whole file.

Can't envision many opportunities for failure anyway, though, apart from bad characters, or a line with only one word present. Blank line should be ignored, and more than two words could bee interpreted as containing middle names to ignore.

I'm cool with simply tracking numbers on - certainly easiest to implement!

[jashort]

I like it!

It's amazing how many programs would be improved by having a big text box and a "just make a half-decent guess at what I want" button. (I've always thought of that as the "Google" interface)

[jashort]

I tweaked the User edit window to be faster to use in ce2da71; fields are First name, Last name, and Role, it will generate uesrname and badge prefix (though it doesn't check to see if they're already in use, and both can still be edited).

That being said, I'd still love to see this one happen. Ctrl-A Ctrl-C Alt-Tab Ctrl-V is way faster than creating users one at a time.