Normally, usernames in the portal must be alphanumeric and cannot contain non-alphanumeric characters. Occasionally, customers will want to have a hyphen, dash, underscore, period, or other character in the usernames.

1. On the portal web server, locate the file in the installation folder named web.config.  Open this file.

2. Search for ‘<settings’.  There should be only one of these in the web.config file.  This tag will contain options like administratorEmail, applicationRoot, fileCabinetContentPath.

2a. At the end of this line, right before the >, copy the following and paste it in there:

userNameRegularExpression="[0-9a-zA-Z]+"

In the bracket, after the A-Z, add a \ and then the character you want to allow in usernames.

For example, if you wish to allow hyphens/dashes, you would end up with:

userNameRegularExpression="[0-9a-zA-Z\-]+"

If you want to allow hyphens, underscores, and @symbols, you would end up with:

userNameRegularExpression="[0-9a-zA-Z_\-\@]+"

3. Save the file once complete, and then you should be able to create or activate users who have these characters in their usernames.