naming conventions

a naming convention is an organizations established standard for identified users in the domain. following a consistent naming convention helps administrators and users remember logon names. it also makes it easier for administrators to locate specific user accounts to add them to groups or perform account administration.

naming convention guidelines

• create unique user logon names - local user account names must be unique on the computer on which you create the local account. user logon names for domain user accounts must be unique to the directory.

• use a maximum of 20 characters -user account names can contain up to 20 uppercase or lowercase characters. the field accepts more than 20 characters, but windows xp professional recognizes only the first 20

• remember that user logon names are not case sensitive - you can use combination of special and alphanumeric characters to establish unique user accounts. user logon names are not case sensitive, but windows xp professional preserves the case for display purposes.

• avoid characters that are not valid -the following characters are not valid: " / \ [ ] : ; | - , + * ? < >

• accommodate employees with duplicate names - if two users have the same name, you could create a user logon name consisting of the first name, the last initial and additional letters from the last name to differentiate the users. for example if two user are named john evans, you could create one user account logon as johne and the other as johnev. you could also number each user logon name-for example, johne 1 and johne 2.

• identify the type of employee - some organizations prefer to identify temporary employees in their user accounts. you could add a T and a dash front of the users logon name (T-johne) or use parenthecs at the end- for example, johne(temp)

• rename the administrator and guest built-in user accounts - you should rename the administrator and guest accounts to provide greater security.