format for user names used by office 365 apps

So we have to do something in the middle.

We also cannot do anything in AzureAD because the user accounts are synchronized and therefore editing in the cloud is prohibited. Changing the format in on-prem AD puts most AD administrators off because they don’t want to screw up 200,000 accounts and work a long weekend restoring stuff. If you are synchronizing from your on-prem AD, then Azure is going to replicate your displayName format. So its good practice to adopt the first name, last name standardization. Now to some users small things like this annoy them and cause unnecessary noise when you’re trying to deploy Teams and drive adoption. When you are not in Teams and someone sends you a chat, whether it is private or within a channel, you will get an email delivered to your inbox from Teams that will start Hi Jackson, Michael or in some cases I have seen just Hi Jackson, Whilst in the application, you can forgive your name being shown as Jackson, Michael it is when you are not in Teams that potentially Teams becomes less friendly and more impersonal. The reason why last name, first name is not a great format for Teams is due to the way Teams interacts with you. This is especially the case where Microsoft Teams is concerned. However, the modern day applications are now more capable in terms of searching and ordering of data, and applications are geared towards first name, last name formats as the new standard. This format dates back to some perceived naming standard when application search was limited so ordering by surname meant that finding the right record was an easier task. However, some larger and older organizations still use the Last name, First name as their display name format. For some organizations this is never an issue. In Microsoft Teams, the name of your internal contacts is displayed in the format found in the displayName field in Azure AD.

Format for user names used by office 365 apps