Managing Duplicate User Accounts

Owned by Luc Richard
Last updated: Jun 03, 2021
2 min read

Problem

Some users may have 2 or more user accounts in the system, which may lead to problem. For example, if a user logs in with their first account to complete a course, but their supervisor is tracking their compliance using the 2nd account, the compliance report might state that the user is non-compliant even though the user has already done the course.

Solution

There are multiple solutions possible depending on the circumstance and use case in question.

  1. An Active Directory user was renamed in Active Directory, which resulted in a duplicate account in the learning environment

  2. An Active Directory user was created in the learning environment, but the user already had a "manual" account .

  3. Two accounts for the same user were created on purpose, but the user prefers to only use one (1) account to complete courses.

Use Case #1

If "auto-discovery" is enabled with your Active Directory server, the learning environment will automatically create users when it discovers a new user in Active Directory. Prior to 3.9.7, the auto-discovery was based on the username. Starting in 3.9.7, the auto-discovery is based on unique identifier stored in Active Directory that never changes, even if the username (e,g, sAMAccountName or cn) changes. As such, the solution to eliminate this problem is to upgrade to 3.9.7. 

Use Case #2

If an Active Directory was created in the learning environment, but the user already had a "manual" account, the recommended procedure is to ask the user to link their accounts together. 

NOTE: It's also possible to prevent this use case by changing the user's authentication method when the user is added to Active Directory. Note that this needs to be done before the second account is created in the learning environment however.

Use Case #3

There are circumstances when an organization wants to a user to have two accounts on purpose. That being said, the user themselves may continue to log in using only one (1) of the multiple accounts. That may lead to compliance reports that show the user as not having completed mandatory courses, even though they have in fact completed them using one of their other accounts.

If that is the case, the recommendation is to advise the user to link their accounts together. By doing so, the learning environment will generate learning records for all linked accounts whenever the user completes a course, thereby making your compliance reports more reliable.

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