@Name Is the Swiss Army Knife for Notes Names: Three Formats, Any Component

Notes names come in three shapes: canonical (CN=Mary Tsen/OU=Illustration/O=Acme/C=US, the full labeled form), abbreviated (Mary Tsen/Illustration/Acme/US, labels stripped), and common (Mary Tsen, just the person). The site’s earlier NotesName’s three formats piece covered why these three make comparisons silently fail; this part covers how to convert between them and extract a part, in formula.

There’s one star function: @Name. The docs say it “allows you to manipulate hierarchical names” — a Swiss army knife for hierarchical names.

TL;DR

• @Name([action]; name): one function, an action keyword decides what it does.
• Convert between the three formats: [CANONICALIZE] expands to canonical, [ABBREVIATE] collapses to abbreviated, [CN] takes just the common name.
• Extract any part: [O] organization, [OU1]/[OU2] org units, [G] given, [S] surname, [C] country, [Q] generation qualifier (like Jr).
• Get the current user: @UserName returns canonical, @V3UserName returns abbreviated.
• The trap: inside a server agent, @UserName’s “current user” is the signer, not the person who triggered it — and the docs say it isn’t a security mechanism.

@Name: converting between the three formats

The three most-used actions map exactly to the three formats:

@Name([CANONICALIZE]; "Mary Tsen/Illustration/Acme/US")
    → CN=Mary Tsen/OU=Illustration/O=Acme/C=US

@Name([ABBREVIATE]; "CN=Mary Tsen/OU=Illustration/O=Acme/C=US")
    → Mary Tsen/Illustration/Acme/US

@Name([CN]; "CN=Mary Tsen/OU=Illustration/O=Acme")
    → Mary Tsen

• [CANONICALIZE]: expand an abbreviated name back to full canonical (restoring the CN=/OU=/O=/C= labels). When you’re writing into Readers/Authors fields or comparing precisely against a stored value, use this to normalize both sides. (Careful: if the name is missing components, [CANONICALIZE] fills them from the current user’s ID — watch out when canonicalizing a partial name.)
• [ABBREVIATE]: the reverse — strip labels to abbreviated, the display format for people.
• [CN]: keep just the person.

(This echoes the NotesName piece: Notes stores canonical underneath, so “[CANONICALIZE] both sides before comparing” is the reliable move.)

@Name: extracting a part

@Name also pulls out a single component — useful for categorizing and permission checks:

For instance, “which department is this person in” is @Name([OU1]; PersonName). There’s also [TOKEYWORD] — reverse the hierarchy joined with backslashes (US\Acme\R&D\…), meant for view categorization.

Getting the current user: @UserName and @V3UserName

To get “who this is right now,” two functions:

• @UserName: the docs say it returns “the current user name,” and for a hierarchical name that’s canonical format (including the CN, OU, O, and C identifiers). It takes an optional index: 0 primary name (default), 1 alternate (since R5).
• @V3UserName: returns the abbreviated format (labels omitted).

Same ID, the difference is the format:

@UserName    → CN=Mary Tsen/OU=Illustration/.../O=WorkSavers/C=US
@V3UserName  → Mary Tsen/Illustration/.../WorkSavers/US

Want the common name? Wrap it: @Name([CN]; @UserName).

The trap you must know

@UserName has a behavior that catches people out: in an agent running on a server, @UserName returns the signer, not the person who actually triggered the agent. The docs also flag that it gives unpredictable results in a public view and should not be used as a security mechanism.

In other words: @UserName is fine on a local database or in a private view for “is this me?” checks (like SELECT @UserName = AssignedTo for a personal view); but once you’re on the server doing real “who can see what” control, don’t lean on it — that’s the job of Readers fields and the ACL.

Wrap-up

For Notes names, formula is mostly @Name: [CANONICALIZE]/[ABBREVIATE]/[CN] to change format, [O]/[OU1]/[S] to extract a part; get the current user with @UserName (canonical) or @V3UserName (abbreviated), remembering that on a server it’s the signer and not a security mechanism.

The next part turns to dates and time — how @Adjust, @Date, @Now/@Today, and @Modified do date arithmetic in formula.

← Back to all posts