What's Happening?
The Washington State Learning Center (WSLC) now requires two fields for user account management. This requirement was set in February 2024.
Who's affected?
Any agency that is part of the state Enterprise Active Directory (EAD) or is part of the Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS). If you are a small agency supported by WaTech, they will manage this update for you. If your agency is outside of the state EAD, your agency sends in an import file to keep user accounts up-to-date.
Why is the username Blank Blank in the WSLC?
Office of Financial Management (OFM) provides Department of Enterprise Services (DES) with an extract from HRMS and EAD that is used to manage user profiles in the WSLC. When an employee transfers to a different agency there are two or more instances of employee records in EAD, OFM sends all matching accounts. DES took this to the WaTech, Forest Resource Group (FRG) and a field was identified to capture the agency 4-character attribute for agency numeric code. By populating both fields (see action items below), OFM can provide a 1:1 match in the data DES receives.
If your agency has not properly updated the Active Directory account by the employee's hire date, the WSLC account will be created using Blank Blank for first and last names. This will impact searching for an employee:
- by name in the Users table (you can only search by employee number)
- notifications will be addressed to Blank Blank
- all dashboards displaying employee information will appear as Blank Blank
- employee details in advanced reporting will appear as Blank Blank
WSLC user profile fields that are updated using EAD data are: First Name, Last Name, Email, Work phone and Full Name.
Action items
As per the Washington State Active Directory Standards (WaTech) these two fields should be formatted accordingly.
Field name: employeeID:
Active employees need to have their full 8 digit employee ID populated in the employeeID attribute. (including leading zeros where needed i.e., 00331122, 01956281, 20084444)
Field name: msDS-cloudExtensionAttribute1
Active employees must now have their full 4 digit agency number populated in the msDS-cloudExtensionAttribute1 attribute. (including leading zeros where needed i.e., 0800 Office of the Lieutenant Governor)
This is the system of record for the agency number to be populated from the "State Administrative and Accounting Manual 75.20 Agency Codes and Authorized Abbreviations (https://ofm.wa.gov/sites/default/files/public/legacy/policy/75.20.pdf)
Contact Information
If you have accounts that have first and last names of Blank Blank, you will need to reach out to your IT support to have them update the Active Directory account for the employee. The WSLC is updated the day after your agency updates the Active Directory account. Please do not update the accounts manually, we need your IT department to do their part.