Change User ID

[will.good]

Hi,

Not sure if this is possible, but is there any way you can update an account's User ID (h_user_id)?

Initially when we went live with Hornbill our support desk advisor accounts were created manually instead of via API, and one of our advisors had their user ID entered incorrectly.

The box is greyed out on our instance, but not sure if HB Support can update via scripts or another way?

[Victor]

@will.good user IDs cannot be changed.

[Gerry]

@will.good

To exapnd on Victor's response above.  It is certainly possible to change the h_user ID value for one or more users, BUT, its very complicated to do, and could break many things.   The h_user_id field for legacy (therefore backwards compatibility) reasons is the primary unique identifier for a user account.  This means, there are a large number of other areas that are going to be referencing that ID, so if you change the ID you will break those referrential links, these could be anything from simple ~FK references in other tables, references to the user(s) from within workflow and ICs and many other places that reference the primary identifier.  So while its technically possible to do it, you will likely break lots of things doing it, and so we generally recommend that you dont make such a change. Many customers use opaque values for this field, often things like the users AD SID or other such thing for this exact reason.  

Hope that makes sense.

Gerry

[SamS]

@will.good In addition to @Gerry's comment, both the Azure and the DB User Import Utilities allow for a GUID to be generated if needed (i.e. for when a SID or so is not available).

[JanS2000]

Morning @Victor and @SamS, on this subject, we've got a number of users whose ID number has changed from that originally created in Hornbill. Some people left and returned in a new role, others had new contracts issued, resulting in a new user ID. The users generally keep the same AD account in most cases and same email address, but the daily user import obviously fails because the handle already exists against the old user name. Is it possible to merge users so we don't have multiple accounts in Hornbill, for these users?

[SamS]

@JanS2000 "It depends" - whatever you have currently set up as an import to keep the records up-to-date (assuming one of our user import utilities), just needs to match the "NEW" account (from source) to the "Existing account" in Hornbill.

Depending on what field you are matching the records with, you can manually modify that field within Hornbill for the import utility to match.

The only exception on this, is the User ID field. That field cannot be changed, so you might be able to look into reconfiguring the user import utility to use a different field to match records on.

[JanS2000]

Thanks @SamS. We've got a couple of different errors come up in the log files, some where it says the User ID already exists, others where the handle already exists, but for all those still showing an error, the user only has one login, but the user ID itself has been changed due to a change in role/contract. One of my colleagues might be able to help me with modifying the user import (json file is it?).

[Ricky]

@JanS2000 The issue you are having where the Handle already exists is due to the modified field being used to populate the userId field within Hornbill, causing the import to attempt to create a new Hornbill Account.  This would then fail due to the original account that has the old UserId having the same Handle as the new account being created; the Handle is configured so that it is required to be unique.  To get around this error, you could delete the old account or modify the Handle on the old account (you may also have to do this with the Employee ID)so that it differs and set it as Archived.  As @SamS has mentioned above, a feature within the import enables you to utilise another field other than the userId. In the above cases, you must use another field, such as the loginId, which should resolve the errors you see.  Obviously, this option would re-use the existing Hornbill account, which may not be desirable in case of a role change unless you change the Roles, Teams, Groups, etc., that the account is a member of within Hornbill.

 

[JanS2000]

Thanks @Ricky, the accounts that error are all basic users that only have the basic user and self-service roles. I'll go through what you've suggested and give these a go, thanks.

 

Just a query re deleting the old accounts in Hornbill - will we lose the history of the calls these people logged, or would they remain and then be re-associated when the new username is picked up and synced across?

 

[Ricky]

@JanS2000, When you delete a user from within Hornbill, any Request, Asset, Service Subscriptions etc. that has been associated, you should assume that the link will be lost.  In some cases, if you re-import a user with the same User ID, then some associations to entities such as Requests, Assets Ownership and Service Subscriptions will be re-established, although this is not guaranteed.  If you have changed the User ID, all links must be established manually.

To retain the links, you would NOT delete the record within Hornbill and modify the Import to use a different field to identify users uniquely, for example, the Login ID field.  Of course, if the login ID is also changed, you must manually modify this field in Hornbill to match the new login ID being imported.