How can I get Team Foundation Server 2010 to display names instead of accounts?

Question

We just updated TFS from 2005 to 2010. We also changed from local accounts to Active Directory domain accounts. In fields such as "Assigned" and "Created", the information displayed now looks like "ab.cd.efgh.com \ doej", where we prefer to see friendly names such as "John Doe" or "Doe, John", How it's done?

Answer 1

To my knowledge, the Active Directory display name is automatically used by TFS 2010.

(here, here and here for discussion, the syncnamechanges function - this may give you something to look for, to learn more about how this works)

I believe that you can change the names used in TFS by simply changing the display names in your Active Directory accounts, but this, of course, will have a global effect, which may be undesirable. I am not sure if there is an alternative, for example, disabling syncnamechnages and returning to simple text fields for these fields.