Hello everyone,
We recently migrated our HRIS to Workday, and I’m looking for advice / best practices around user email (work email) creation, especially when handling duplicate names.
Background
Before Workday, our flow was:
Old HRIS → custom app/code → Okta
That custom code handled email uniqueness logic. For example:
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If two users had the same first + last name (e.g., John Doe),
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The second user’s email would automatically include a middle initial or similar logic to prevent duplicates.
Current Okta setup
In Okta:
- login == email (work email)
Example:
login: john.doe@company.com
email: john.doe@company.com
However, we also have legacy users created years ago with formats like:
-
login: jdoe@company.com -
email: jdoe@company.com
Concern
If we move to Workday-driven provisioning, I’m concerned that:
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Existing users with legacy usernames/emails might be impacted
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Or that we’ll run into conflicts when Workday creates new users with duplicate names
Big question
With Workday as the HR source of truth:
Who should be responsible for creating the work email?
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Workday?
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Okta?
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Or some external logic (Workflows, middleware, etc.)?
What I’ve found so far
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Okta Expression Language doesn’t seem great at handling email uniqueness at scale (especially for first + last name collisions).
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Our Workday team claims they cannot generate the work email in Workday — which I’m skeptical about, since I’ve heard from others that this is possible (likely via calculated fields or business processes).
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Unfortunately, Workday documentation isn’t public, so it’s hard to verify independently.
What I’m hoping to learn
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Have any of you dealt with this exact problem?
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Do you generate the email in Workday, Okta, or elsewhere?
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How do you safely handle:
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Duplicate names
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Legacy users
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login == email constraints in Okta
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Any real-world experience or architectural guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!