Nickname field - confirm what it is used for

[JackieMeija]

Hi There!

With our new ERP system we now have the ability to send people's legal names and preferred names to Concur - preferred name being their "nickname".  We are hoping this will resolve the issues we continuously have with travel of employees not having their legal names.

Can you confirm what this Nickname field is used for?  I know with support requests now it's using my legal name instead of nickname which I'm surprised about.  I would have thought the nickname field is what people prefer to be called.  Want to confirm before we update our entire company.  (eg. when an expense is reported to an approval manager will it be the employees legal name or nickname)  Thanks!!

[JackieMeija · Accepted solution]

For those that may view this later for information...

Concur responded back to me saying the Nickname field doesn't actually act as a preferred name field.  It's purely for if you have someone else in your company that uses a different name you can document it there for reference but that Nickname is not actually used anywhere.  

[SallyParsons]

Hi Jackie, I see this post is pretty old, but wondering if you were able to solve this issue? We currently have our users' preferred name populate in their profile, and leave the field open for editing when they need to book air travel so they can edit to match their identification. Have you found a way for users' preferred name to show up/display to others, but still have their "legal" name that matches their ID be the one that is used for travel bookings?

[lsussmann]

Hi Sally, I had the same question as you, wondering if you possibly heard back from Jackie yet?  We have not made any changes yet to the Employee Import to accommodate for Preferred Name but we need to be in compliance by 2023.  We have the Expense module and have a need to store and display Legal Name for our Back Office staff that audits expense reports against receipts but we have a need to display only Preferred Name (aka Nickname in the Concur profile) for the user.  

Here is a question I asked Concur about the Nickname from the user profile and their response:

Question: Can the Nickname field to be used to capture Preferred Name and then also displayed in areas of the system in lieu of displaying the legal name as the Employee Name?

Answer: The nickname field is not part of the Employee Import, so it can't be used for what you're looking for.   

It sounds like there is an issue with a systematic way to populate the Nickname field if we wanted to use that for the Preferred name and keep the legal name in the First Name field.  In addition Concur did not answer about the ability to display the Preferred/Nickname in certain areas but retain the legal name in others.  

[dlamont]

Hello,

Maybe this will help. 

We import user names and data from our payroll program, so the name uses their legal name from their SS card.  However, some users have a different form of their name on their travel ID (Driver's License, passport etc.).  So we had Concur change our travel profile settings to NOT update the employee name once imported.  Now our Travel Admin can change their Travel Profile name (only done by Admin) to match travel ID, and once changed,  it is set and will not change unless changed manually by Admin.  This way our nightly import from payroll cannot overwrite the Travel Name.  We just have to tell everyone during new hire orientation to be sure and let us know if their travel ID does not match their SS card, otherwise they can experience travel issues, especially with TSA!

This was a site setting change that we submitted a support ticket for, but the change was pretty quick.

The nickname field itself isn't of much benefit unless you are an admin pulling reports and find it useful, as the field isn't visible anywhere else that I've seen.  🙂

[SallyParsons]

We currently do something similar to DLamont. We import the preferred name to the user's profile, leave it open for users to edit, and do not update the field nightly with the feed. When users go to book travel they must update their name to match the identification that will be presented at the airport. This way the user has control over the name that displays in Concur and with Concur notices. But the solution would be to allow the nickname field to remain open for editing for the user to enter their preferred name which would be used for display in Concur. The profile name would only be used for booking and would need to match their identification.