Autocomplete for users(usernames) is dodgy in Confluence
Asked by Elvar Bjarki B??varsson:

I have my Confluence 3.5.3 installation connected to Active Directory and when I try for exmple to share a page with a user and start to write his name it sometimes completes correctly and sometimes not, dependent on the user. Has something to do with Icelandic letters.

For example

Writing Gu?ni it does not work, but what does work is writing Gudni which then searches for the username instead of full name.

But writing searching for some other names with Icelandic letters it seems to only manage to search in the lastname and middlename fields, but never in the firstname field.

So if someones name is Gu?ni J?nsson searching for Gu?ni would give no results but searching for J?nsson would work. If someones name is J?n Gu?nason searching for J?n would give no results but searching for Gu?nason would work.


Answers:
author: Alejandro Conde Carrillo
body: Hi.

Are you using any proxy? From my experience, this kind of problems are normally generated in the proxy. An easy test it to access confluence directly with the IP of the server and test the behaviour there.

Another thing to chek is if your DB is set to use UTF-8.

comments: author: Elvar Bjarki B??varsson
body: We are not using a proxy at the moment but its on the roadmap. Is there anything to take into consideration?

The DB is set to Collation = Icelandic_CI_AS

Would changing it to UTF-8 solve this?


author: Coen Flach
body: Picking up on this earlier post. We also experience issues with the autocomplete for users function:

I have 2 users in my instance (3.5.13 but tested in 4.2.6 as well; no LDAP, just plain Confluence users):

1. John Doe, username: [johndoe@courseware.nl](mailto:johndoe@courseware.nl), email: johndoe@courseware.nl
2. Jane Doe, username: doe, email: janedoe@courseware.nl

When I would search using the main search feature (upper right screen corner), I could enter 'john' or 'jane' and Confluence would find both users. However, when I search in either the user field of the 'Share' feature or the 'who' field when filtering a search query, I will only find 'Jane' autocompleted. 'John' will not autocomplete to 'John Doe'. Only when I enter 'Doe', John (and Jane) will be autcompleted.

Conclusion: Confluence cannot autocomplete users based on their first name when user details are provided as with user 1); only when provided as with user 2).

Does anyone experience this as well and/or does anyone have a suggestion as to what may cause this behavior?

Thanks in advance for a reply.

Jurriaan van Reijsen  
The Courseware Company (Dutch Atlassian Partner)


author: Coen Flach
body: Picking up on this earlier post. We also experience issues with the autocomplete for users function:

I have 2 users in my instance (3.5.13 but tested in 4.2.6 as well; no LDAP, just plain Confluence users):

1. John Doe, username: johndoe\[at\]courseware.nl, email: johndoe\[at\]courseware.nl
2. Jane Doe, username: doe, email: janedoe\[at\]courseware.nl

When I would search using the main search feature (upper right screen corner), I could enter 'john' or 'jane' and Confluence would find both users. However, when I search in either the user field of the 'Share' feature or the 'who' field when filtering a search query, I will only find 'Jane' autocompleted. 'John' will not autocomplete to 'John Doe'. Only when I enter 'Doe', John (and Jane) will be autcompleted.

Conclusion: Confluence cannot autocomplete users based on their first name when user details are provided as with user 1); only when provided as with user 2).

Does anyone experience this as well and/or does anyone have a suggestion as to what may cause this behavior?

Thanks in advance for a reply.

Jurriaan van Reijsen  
The Courseware Company (Dutch Atlassian Partner)


Tags: active-directory

auto-complete