15.4. User Name Aliases

A User Alias is a way of mapping a user name in one format to a name in another. It is useful in the following situations:

  • Providing extra convenience for users to log into the system with a user name formatted in a different way. So Georg Friedrich Händel can have a User Alias of “georg_handel”, “gf_handel”, and “gfhandel”.

  • Used as a temporary tool to manage domain or user name format changes. For example, you may have changed names from j.brown to john.brown. An alias can help forgetful users to log in with their old name.

Name aliases are applied at the following levels:

  • User Login to the User and Admin Web App.

  • Print jobs arriving under the alias name.

The aliases information is kept in the file,
/opt/savapage/server/data/conf/username-aliases.txt

… and can be created based on the provided template file,
/opt/savapage/server/data/conf/username-aliases.txt.tmpl

You can create your own custom alias file as follows:

  • Go to the directory /opt/savapage/server/data/conf/

  • Open your favorite text editor with the file username-aliases.txt.tmpl

  • For example, add the following lines to the end:

    j.brown : john.brown
jbrown  : john.brown

  • Save file as username-aliases.txt

The format of the alias file is:

aliasname1: username1
aliasnameA: username2
aliasnameB: username2

… where aliasname is mapped to username in the system database. A user may have multiple aliases. In this example, username2 is known both as aliasnameA and aliasnameB. The separator between aliasname and username can be “:”, “=“ or tab.

Warning

If an offered user name does not match an alias in the alias file, it is assumed it represents the user’s real name. If this user is new to the system he might be created automatically in SavaPage, according to the user creation policy defined in the Options > User Creation > On demand user creation section of the Admin Web App. So please take care that your alias list is valid and up-to-date.

Tip

The content of the user name aliases file is read and cached when the SavaPage service is started. See User Name Aliases Cache on how to refresh the cache after you edited the file content.