Why does Shibboleth sometimes return different names for students than class roster?

The legacy UCLA Single Sign On solution ISIS, now replaced by Shibboleth, used to prioritize data in payroll record from QDB over student record from SRDB if a student works at UCLA and their payroll record shows a different name. After the Enterprise Directory (ED) rolled out in production in November 2006, ISIS (now Shibboleth) switched its backend to ED which pulls a person’s name information based on a different logic. This ED name logic favors the name recorded in student system when different names are found in both student and payroll system for the same UID, if the person is a current student with UCLA. Therefore ISIS (now Shibboleth) no longer returns the name in payroll system as long as the person is a current student. The only case that payroll name is returned instead of student record name is that the person is a current UCLA employee but not a current UCLA student.

Exception: Students who have full-on FERPA restriction flag turned on in student system are not recognized in the Enterprise Directory because their information including names in student system are restricted for release. In such case, if they are UCLA employee at the same time, ED will recognize them as current UCLA employee but not current UCLA student, and thus return the names in payroll system.

Here’s the current name resolution logic implemented in ED:

a. If a person currently has student affiliation (meaning UID exists in V610), select the name in the order below no matter what other affiliation this person has:

  1. SR0 name
  2. SI0 name
  3. PP0 name
  4. UNX name

Note: If the name selected is found with APP_USAGE_STATUS <> ‘A’, an error message will be logged but the name still goes in ED.

b. Else, if a person currently has employee affiliation (meaning UID in payroll system with a emp_status<> ‘S’ – ‘not seperated’), select the name in the order below:

  1. PP0 name
  2. SR0 name
  3. SI0 name
  4. UNX name

Note: If the name selected is found with APP_USAGE_STATUS <> ‘A’ an error message will be logged but the name still goes in ED.

c. Else, meaning a person does not have either student of employee affiliation, go with the same order of step a.

Back to top