Changing users DisplayName isn't permanent (i:0#.f|... issue)

Question

We're having the issue where user's names shown after logging in are being preffixed with the membership provider information, e.g. i:0#.f|fbamembershipprovider|myemail@q... (note that we're using FBA rather than AD)

I've found many articles that explain how to change this in powershell, but on an individual user by user basis, so I decided to write a small C# console app to make the changes on all affected users:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    string serverName = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["qmServer"];
    bool performUpdates = Convert.ToBoolean(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["qmPerformUpdates"]);
    int updatesPerformed = 0;
    int updatesRequired = 0;
    StringBuilder updatedUsers = new StringBuilder();
    using (SPSite site = new SPSite(serverName))
    {
        using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb("/"))
        {
            bool allowUpdates = web.AllowUnsafeUpdates;
            web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = true;
            SPUserCollection userColl = web.AllUsers;
            foreach (SPUser user in userColl)
            {
                if (user.Name.IndexOf("i:0#.f|fbamembershipprovider|") == 0)
                {
                    updatesRequired++;

                    if (performUpdates)
                    {
                        try
                        {
                            user.Name = user.Name.Replace("i:0#.f|fbamembershipprovider|", "");
                            user.Update();
                            updatesPerformed++;
                        }
                        catch { }                                
                    }
                    updatedUsers.AppendLine(user.Name);
                }
            }
            web.Update();
            web.AllowUnsafeUpdates = allowUpdates;
        }
    }
}

The problem is that while this works, the effect is only temporary. Sometime later (within 1 hour I think), the affected names are reverted back to showing the membership info.

Can anyone advise why the updates are not permanent? Is there a server (User Profile Sync?) that might be reverting the names?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Kevin

Answer 1

I found a timed job that has been resyncing the display name: Farm User Profile Service Proxy - User Profile to SharePoint Full Synchronization. Having disabled this (temporarily until I find out exactly what it does), I've not seen my 'fixed' display names reverting back to their former values.

Thanks sween_sp for the nudge in the right direction.