All profiles on HosPortal have:
a title (eg. Dr, Ms)
a first name
a last name
a short name
The shortname is an abbreviation for a user, that:
may help to differentiate two people with the same or similar name, or represent a "familiar" name
be shorter and take up less space on a roster, or a similar amount of space for each user, no matter the length of their first or last name,
is UNIQUE to each site, so there cannot be confusion between different users
The short name is unique to a site, and can literally be anything, though typically it will be "generated" from a user's firstname and lastname. The default on HosPortal without any other settings is the lastname followed by the first initial.
Example: Jennifer Kildare -> KildareJ
When a user is added, this shortname is generated, unless there already exists a shortname matching this on the site, in which case further letters will be added.
If your site uses a different "pattern", you can create your own.
For example, some sites use the first 3 letters of the lastname followed by the first letter of the last name, all capitals.
Jennifer Kildare -> KILJ
How to create a shortname setting
You can find "short name settings" on the admin page of HosPortal
Creating a shortname setting consists of a pattern made up of 3 components:
a firstname pattern
an optional connector pattern
a lastname pattern
Firstname patterns can be
First (the whole of the firstname, capitalized)
first (the whole of the firsname, lowercase)
FIRST (the whole of the firstname, all caps)
f (the first letter of the firstname, lowercase; if more than one, you get more than one letter of the first name)
F (first letter of the firstname, uppercase)
Lastname patterns can be
Last
last
LAST
l
L
Connectors can be:
. (dot)
- (dash)
_ (underscore
To build a pattern, you can put any number of these in any order.
So the HosPortal default pattern is:
LastF
The 4-letter pattern above is:
LLLF
If you wanted the first 4 letters of the last name, a dash, and the first two letters of the first name, in upper case, you would use:
LLLL-FF -> KILD-JE