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Dynamics 365 Community / Forums / Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived) / Changing the usernames
Microsoft Dynamics AX (Archived)

Changing the usernames

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Posted on by Community Member

Greetings!

The company I work for has a high turnover when it comes to personnel. This has resulted in them wanting to create user accounts based on function. Of course they want to retain the current accounts and just rename them. Due to the connection to the Active Directory I am aware it's not possible to just rename/change anything and anyone (like the User ID).

When reading the AX manual it says the "User name" field is optional so this lead me to believe I could freely change this. When I tried changing this for my own account the change was accepted. Yet when I tried changing this for another user, AX threw an error in my face telling me the user did not exist in the Active Directory. Can anyone tell me why this was? As far as I could tell from the manuals it's the "Alias" that's used to connect to the Active Directory and not the actual user name. Or is it not possible to change an existing account in the first place?

Thanks in advance.

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  • Suggested answer
    Jonathan Halland Profile Picture
    Jonathan Halland 11,310 on at

    Hi

    The username itself you should be able to change, however what may be occuring in your case is that the AD user linked to this user is no longer valid and hence the validation error on save. (this could be because the AD user was deleted or disabled)

    To resolve ensure that you have a valid AX user alias and domain selected.

  • Jonathan Halland Profile Picture
    Jonathan Halland 11,310 on at

    In addition, why don't you look at using AD groups in AX to manage all of this for you? That way you can shift the user creation responsibility entirely over to the AD administrators.

    E.G.

    1. Create "Credit Controller" AD group to which all new credit controllers are added.

    2. Create "Credit Controller" AD group user in AX with the correct permissions

    New credit controllers will now be automatically added and disabled in AX based on their AD permissions.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    First of all I'd like to thank you for your answer!

    I do get what you're saying and I'll definitively look into this but, in the meantime the persons account I tried to adjust belonged to someone who has been logging into Windows just fine. Wouldn't this mean the AD user was fine?

    Or is it possible to change things in the AD without having to change that in AX while still leaving the AX user intact?

  • Verified answer
    André Arnaud de Calavon Profile Picture
    André Arnaud de Cal... 300,911 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

    Hi Sebasshhh,

    There is a check on the user SID from AX. If the user alias looks OK, there might be another SID involved.  SID is the Security ID from Active directory. This might change if the user was deleted from active directory and recreated.

    If you disable the user in AX, save the record and then enable it again, AX will retrieve the new SID from the active directory.

  • Jonathan Halland Profile Picture
    Jonathan Halland 11,310 on at

    Hi Sebasshh, Are you certain that nothing has changed in AD with this user alias and domain?

    Can you maybe also explain your last sentance a bit more: "Or is it possible to change things in the AD without having to change that in AX while still leaving the AX user intact?"

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    Hi Jonathan,

    As I mentioned the company I work for has experienced a high turnover in personnel over the past year or so. During this time our systems admin 're-purposed' the old AD accounts and (as far as I know) renamed them so the new employees had an account to work with and so he could keep things like their email-boxes intact. Because this happened before I was hired I am unsure how he did this.

    I do know the AD users are linked to AX. Our users never have to separately log in to AX after logging into Windows with their accounts. But, when I check and see who's online I still see a lot of old usernames; names of people who no longer work here. This would have me believe our admin has only updated the AD side of the users, not the AX side. Yet they're still able to log in and use AX without any issues.

    I'll try disabling/enabling the users as André suggested and see if that resolves anything.

    Thank you for your answers/help in this matter so far!

  • Verified answer
    Jonathan Halland Profile Picture
    Jonathan Halland 11,310 on at

    Hi Sebasshhh

    My guess is that he changed the login names in AD and display names but the SSID remained the same. This way the users would still be able to login to AX as it validates against the SSID. I would recommend checking that the alias' stored against the SSIDs in the AX user tables matches the setup in AD. You may need to do this extract in SQL.

    I hope I'm understanding your question a little better.

  • Jonathan Halland Profile Picture
    Jonathan Halland 11,310 on at

    Hi Sebasshhh

    My guess is that he changed the login names in AD and display names but the SSID remained the same. This way the users would still be able to login to AX as it validates against the SSID. I would recommend checking that the alias' stored against the SSIDs in the AX user tables matches the setup in AD. You may need to do this extract in SQL.

    I hope I'm understanding your question a little better.

  • Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    I already approved the answers that helped me solve this issue but I thought I'd give a final update considering this subject.

    It was actually exactly as Jonathan mentioned in his last post. Our AD admin changed the login and display names in the AD and added a new email alias in addition to the ones belonging to the previous user. He then neglected to inform anyone on the AX end of things causing a mismatch between the stored alias in AX and the setup in the AD. The SSID remained and was still being used to validate the access to AX.

    I'd like to (again) thank everyone involved in helping me figure this problem out; thank you all for your advises and tips!

  • Suggested answer
    Community Member Profile Picture
    Community Member on at

    HI Sebasshh,

    Could you please let m e know, how could you  solved this issue.

    I am also facing the same issue,one of my user.

    Thanks in Advance

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