Author: Keith Tuomi

A basic issue – the client has their Active Directory DisplayName populated in the style of “LastName, FirstName“. Legacy business requirements dictate that the DisplayName stays in that format – but the SharePoint champion comes along and indicates that it would be preferable to have the SharePoint 2010 UI show the users DisplayName in the standard “FirstName LastName” format. After quickly toying with the idea of using Jquery or some other front-end patch to just reverse the names – complications arose – number one being the data in the DisplayName field in AD was inconsistent, with various flavours and styles of data that was mashed together over the years. Active Directory is aptly named-  people will mess up this data actively. Not to be trusted.  The solution: 1. Set up the SharePoint 2010 User Profile Synchronization and use custom field mapping. 2. Create a new profile property in AD called customDisplayName and give it the values Firstname Lastname 3. Map the new customDisplayName property to the SP DisplayName property. So, the end result should be that users would now see their DisplayName throughout the SP application populated with the AD field data “FirstName LastName” Getting User Profile Synchronization itself planned, configured and deployed is a big task. This post will let help you  plan out your first moves. Authoritative initial references can be found at: TechNet – Configure profile synchronization (SharePoint Server 2010): http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721049.aspx Rational Guide...