What characters are valid in user profile first and last name?

Jason Ruvinsky

Certified Senior Developer

over 7 years ago

There is inconsistent handling of "valid" characters in a user profile first and last name, depending on where the fields are edited. Using the "Create User with i18n" plugin smart service allows a name to include characters, such as comma and period. (e.g. "King, Jr.") This appears in the user profile from the People tab on designer, afterwards. However, if you edit any field on the user profile in designer and click "Update", a validation error states "King, Jr. contains an invalid character."

Also, the "Update User Profile" smart service throws an error when used to edit this user, stating: "[First name may only contain letters, numbers, whitespace, and the _ or - special characters][Last name may only contain letters, numbers, whitespace, and the _ or - special characters]".

Is this list of valid characters accurate? If so, why is it that Appian doesn't actually have any is...

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0 Jason Ruvinsky
Certified Senior Developer
over 7 years ago

...sues using the "invalid" characters when added via that plugin? Is there an error with the OOTB functionality that is being over-zealous in its validation?
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0 Eduardo Fuentes
Appian Employee
over 7 years ago

I believe there's a different list of invalid characters in the UI from what the smart service Add User and the Create User with i18n have.

I'll take a look. Is this on Appian 16.3?
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0 Jason Ruvinsky
Certified Senior Developer
over 7 years ago

Correct, this is on Appian 16.3. We're also having the issue with the "Update User Profile" smart service.
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0 Eduardo Fuentes
Appian Employee
over 7 years ago

So basically Update User Profile allows characters that the People tab doesn't?
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0 Jason Ruvinsky
Certified Senior Developer
over 7 years ago

No, "Update User Profile" is giving the error message in my initial message about invalid characters.
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0 ChristineH
Certified Lead Developer
over 7 years ago

There has always been a difference in which special characters the smart service permits/blocks vs. the people tab. I used to have a document that lists which one allows which special characters. I will keep looking to see if I can find it. Unfortunately, the way I got to this list was good ol' manual test one character at a time as the product doc does not provide the listing.
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0 Eduardo Fuentes
Appian Employee
over 7 years ago

I found that I am not using com.appiancorp.suiteapi.personalization.UserValidationUtil to make sure the inputs meet the UI and Add User constraints.

I'll release an update tomorrow that should prevent the use of forbidden characters by using com.appiancorp.suiteapi.personalization.UserValidationUtil
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0 Jason Ruvinsky
Certified Senior Developer
over 7 years ago

Since our users are being imported from another system that we synchronize them with, we'll need to strip out invalid characters. Can you please provide a definitive list of what is valid?
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0 Eduardo Fuentes
Appian Employee
over 7 years ago

1. I've added the validation to the plug-in to match the out of the box character restrictions.

2. Looking at the JavaDocs of UserValidationUtils, used by the out of the box functionality too:

*Name fields may only contain letters, numbers, whitespace, and the _ or - special characters forum.appian.com/.../UserValidationUtils.html

Username can only contain letters, numbers, and the following special characters: @ . _ - . It must not match an existing username regardless of case. forum.appian.com/.../User_Management.html
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0 Jason Ruvinsky
Certified Senior Developer
over 7 years ago

Thanks, Eduardo!
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