There are two ways to set a username. Once set, a username is permanent.
Make the username the same as the user's email address:
- pro: it's a simple strategy that will set a known username pattern for your company
- pro: it will be easily remembered by users
- con: email addresses can be long, entailing more typing
- con: if the user's email address changes, their username will not be consistent with their new email address
If an email address is used as the basis for a username, updating the user's email address later does not change their username.
Specify a custom username:
- pro: the username can be shorter than an email address, so less typing is needed
- pro: this strategy supports the situation where a user needs more than one user account
- con: you have to invent the username, which can be onerous if you have many users (though this can be mitigated by devising a convention for generating usernames from given names)
If you choose to create a custom username it can be a maximum of 20 characters. You can use @, hyphen, underscore and period in the username but no other special characters, punctuation or spaces. This username must be unique and should not match other account information such as phone number.