Can I change My RRU email address or Username

Understanding the Naming Convention

The first item that is created is the username.  

1. The username is created using the first initial of your Preferred Name + your last name.
   (IE. Student name Douglas Brown becomes dbrown.)
2. If the username dbrown has been used previously, then the last name is preceded with a number.  Therefore the system will check the availability of d1brown.  If that is taken, it increments upward until the system finds an unused username (IE. d4brown).

Second the email address is generated based on the username.  

1. Using the example above, Douglas Brown, username d4brown, will get an email address of Douglas.4Brown @ Royalroads.ca.

Why can't I request a different Username/Email address?

At Royal Roads University we have multiple thousands of student accounts and email addresses, all of which must be accessed by a variety of staff, faculty and automated business processes.  In order for our staff and processes to interact successfully with our accounts we depend on these accounts adhering to specific standards, of which user name and email address are only two.  Deviating from the established standard significantly increases the possibility of errors and elevates the workload around managing those elements which depend on these items adhering to our standard format.  As well, our user community - staff, faculty and students - are used to using our established naming conventions; deviating from what people are used to can add confusion and effort to what they do and that's something we try to avoid wherever possible.

This decision hasn't been made lightly or off-the-cuff.  Past requests for changes have been discussed at length amongst our Network Account, Corporate Applications support teams and by our Information Technology management group before it was decided that we needed to adhere to our established naming conventions.

There are only two ways that a username or email address can be changed. First is with an official name change through the Registrar's office (i.e. maiden name changed to married name).  It should be noted that this will also change the name on the diploma and all other official documentation.  The second is if the username is offensive in some way, then we may make an exception.  (Stephen Tupid (username "stupid") could request for an exception to our naming convention, however we would only correct it by telling our system that the first username has been used and increment the account with a number). 

Can you change how my name is displayed?

We can make some changes to the capitalisation of your display name in the address book as well as add a suffix like (staff) or (student) if there are similar names in the system.  Please contact the Computer Services department by clicking on the Submit a Request link on this page to discuss this further.  Please note that this does not change the email address and has little impact on what the receiver sees, it is mainly for internal display purposes.

I was a staff/faculty person, why can't I use that same username as a student (or vice versa)?

Royal Roads keeps the student and staff accounts separately on purpose.  Student and staff/faculty accounts have different permissions and permissions and access can change due to the state your account is in.  For this reason, it is much easier to have two separate accounts to keep the permissions in line.  Also, should an employee leave, and their account is terminated, this would remove all access to previous courses and course material.