Creating a .csv file containing user account information

Uploading a .csv file with account information is one of approaches that you can follow to sync user identities between Cognos® Analytics and OpenID Connect.

The .csv file that contains the list of users to be imported into the OpenID Connect namespace must be properly formatted for the import to be successful. It must use the following formats:

  • UTF-8 character encoding
  • Windows CRLF for line breaks

The first row in the file is the header. This row must contain the email column, and can contain the following, optional columns: defaultName, businessPhone, faxPhone, givenName, homePhone, mobilePhone, pagerPhone, postalAddress, surname, userName.

Tip: All of the column names are properties of the account class in IBM Cognos Analytics. The names are case sensitive, and must be typed exactly as specified in this document.

All other rows in the file contain values corresponding to the columns specified in the first row.

Here is an example of a .csv file with two users:

  • Row 1: email,defaultName,givenName,surname
  • Row 2: Andy.Bergin@ca.ibm.com,Andy Bergin,Andy,Bergin
  • Row 3: Kirsten.Vaughan@ca.ibm.com,Kirsten Vaughan,Kirsten,Vaughan

You can add all your users to one .csv file, or you can create multiple files with fewer names in each file.

After the file is imported, the defaultName for the user is set in the following way:

  • If defaultName is specified in the .csv file, the name is used.
  • If defaultName is not specified in the .csv file, but givenName and surname are specified, the default name is set as givenName surname.
  • If defaultName, givenName, and surname are not specified, the email is used as the default name.

Multiple users can have the same first and last names. To avoid potential conflicts, specify a different defaultName for the users, or do not specify surname and givenName for them. You can also modify the surname by adding a unique character or number to it, such as Simpson1 or Simpson2.

Note: Properties are automatically updated from the namespace provider when the user logs in. Therefore, if the namespace supports properties such as timeZone or localePreference, they are saved in the account proxy when the user logs in.