How to resolve full names from a Person or Group column (that contains multiple entries) in a designer workflow

Question

I have a custom list with a custom content type, with a workflow, on SharePoint 2007 as outlined in this other StackExchange question.

I'm using a Person or Group typed column to contain a list of stakeholder(s), to whom emails are addressed as To: or CC: at various stages in the workflow.

But I would also like to resolve the usernames contained within this column (or dynamic string variable), to their display names. The requirement is to include the people's names in the email salutation. At the moment I'm getting eg

Dear MYDOMAIN\BloggsJ; MYDOMAIN\DoeJ; MYDOMAIN\DoeJohn,

instead of eg

Dear Joe Bloggs, Jane Doe, John Doe,

or even better would be (if it can be done),

Dear Joe Bloggs, Jane Doe, and John Doe,

---

Broadly, my question is "How do I display a list of users, contained within a Person or Group column, when that column will contain more than one username?".

Specific statements/questions that may prompt a solution, based on my trains-of-thought so far are:

1. Is there some setting I can use somewhere to adjust how these names are displayed in workflow-generated emails?

2. Otherwise, this article describes USING VARIABLES TO RESOLVE USER NAMES... but this process operates on a single Person or Group, not a semi-colon separated list of people/groups. Is there a way to explode and/or loop over the items within the Person or Group column (from within the context of the SharePoint Designer) so that I can use this approach?

3. I considered just using multiple Person or Group fields, each only allowing a single entry... but that seems clunky and as I'm not 100% sure at this stage if I will only ever need to cater for 2 or 3 names, may not be practical.

4. I considered using calculated columns to break down the list of recipients, but same issue applies regarding the potential for a larger number of names. I think it comes down to requiring a mechanism to loop over the names?

5. Are there any other 'fresh perspective' or 'outside of the box' approaches that you can think of that may help?

I appreciate your time, thanks.

** EDIT: Further information **

I'm trying to display the usernames in my Person or group field using the [%ListItemContentTypeName:PersonOrGroupFieldName%] template field within the "Define e-mail message" GUI of the SPD workflow wizard.

The output of this is always in the form DOMAINNAME\UserName regardless of what's set for the "Show field:" setting on the Person or Group's "Edit Column" page, and I've confirmed that SharePoint already has the correct display name as collected from AD (eg changing this setting to "Show field" = "Name" renders the display name, rather than the user name, when looking at the item within the SharePoint site.

So the question becomes "How do I convince the workflow to correctly resolve usernames to display names, when other aspects of SharePoint already appear to be resolving this correctly?"

Answer 1

Create a Single-line of text column and make it as hidden. Through event receiver populate its value in your desired pattern (e.g. Dear Joe Bloggs, Jane Doe, and John Doe) from the "Person or Group" column. And use that new column in the workflow instead of "Person or Group" column. I know there is a overhead of writing event receiver but you will be able to achieve exactly what you want.

I hope this makes sense.

Answer 2

I tackled this problem from the other direction. I created a plain text field in my List called "UserName". I then created a Name (With presence) field, called "NameUser".

Next I created a Workflow on the list to copy the plain text from "UserName" into the "NameUser" field.

When I generated a WorkFlow email from the list, the bit that says "Dear So-And-So" was extracted from the "UserName" field and the recipient's email address (and anything else needed from that person's profile) can be generated from the "NameUser" field.

So simple, you'll be kicking yourself ...

Answer 3

http://geekswithblogs.net/enriquelima/archive/2012/02/27/going-from-ldquodomainusernamerdquo-to-display-name-in-sharepoint.aspx

Check for this Link

First Change Display name Domain\User to User then only it is affected user fields in SharePoint.

Answer 4

I don't have an OOTB way to do it but this is what I used in my Silverlight Web Part to obtain that information. If you are using SPD in the column list editor you should be able to specify for the people column how you want the column returned and in your workflow or whatever you can select the value. But the way I am showing is using VS2010.

    Private Sub RequestListQuerySucceeded(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As ClientRequestSucceededEventArgs)
    Deployment.Current.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(Sub()

                                                  Dim dataList As New ObservableCollection(Of RequestListModel)
                                                  Deployment.Current.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(Sub()
                                                                                                RequestListData = New PagedCollectionView(dataList)
                                                                                                If RequestListData.CanGroup = True Then
                                                                                                    RequestListData.GroupDescriptions.Add(New PropertyGroupDescription("Status"))
                                                                                                    RequestListData.GroupDescriptions.Add(New PropertyGroupDescription("RequestDate"))
                                                                                                    RequestListData.GroupDescriptions.Add(New PropertyGroupDescription("ProductLine"))
                                                                                                End If

                                                                                            End Sub)
                                                  For Each item In NPIRequestListCollection
                                                      Dim d As New RequestListModel
                                                      d.RequestType = item("Request_x0020_Type")
                                                      d.RequestDate = item("Requested")
                                                      d.Category = item("Category")
                                                      d.Status = item("Approved")
                                                      d.CustomerName = item("Customer_x0020_Name")
                                                      d.RequestCompleted = item("Completed")
                                                      d.ProductLine = item("Product_x0020_Line")
                                                      d.EffectivityDate = item("Effectivity")
                                                      d.RequestedBy = CType(item("Requested_x0020_By"), FieldUserValue).LookupValue
                                                      d.CostImpact = item("Cost_x0020_Impact")
                                                      d.Department = item("Department")
                                                      d.Division = item("Division")
                                                      d.Description = item("Description")
                                                      d.CustomerPartNumber = item("Customer_x0020_Part_x0020_Number")
                                                      d.CustomerPhoneNumber = item("Customer_x0020_Phone_x0020_Numbe")
                                                      d.CustomerRevisionLevel = item("Customer_x0020_Revision_x0020_Le")
                                                      d.CustomerFaxNumber = item("Customer_x0020_Fax_x0020_Number")
                                                      d.CustomerContact = item("Customer_x0020_Contact")
                                                      d.EAU = item("EAU")
                                                      d.Comments = item("Comments")
                                                      Deployment.Current.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(Sub()
                                                                                                    dataList.Add(d)
                                                                                                End Sub)

                                                  Next

                                              End Sub)
End Sub

Please note the Ctype to FieldUserValue it has properties that can display the user as you would like.

Answer 5

Select as Display Name instead of As string.

Answer 6

easiest way is to create a column and set it as person/group and choose show name(with presence) option. Now just create a workflow to set created by field(or whoever who want to display full name) name to above created new name column