Introduction

This article lists the special characters accepted by the platform to help Superadmins maintain security, data integrity, compatibility, and a positive user experience while ensuring compliance with industry standards.

List of supported special characters

Special characters in the email field

In the local part (before the @ symbol)

• Special characters such as < > ( ) [ ] \ , ; : \s @ " are restricted
• A period (.) cannot appear at the beginning of the email address or immediately before the “@” symbol. Additionally, consecutive periods (..) are not allowed.
• However, if the local part is enclosed in double quotes, these characters are permitted (e.g., user..f@example.com is invalid, but "user..f"@example.com is valid)

In the domain part (after the @ symbol)

Only the following are permitted:

• IP addresses enclosed in square brackets (e.g., name.surname@[34.13.12.25])
• Alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z), hyphens (-), underscores (_), and periods (.) as separators

Username field - special character handling

The system automatically removes or processes certain characters entered in the username field, as described below.

HTML Tags and angle brackets (< >)

• All HTML tags are removed. 
  Example: <div>Test-NU2</div> → Test-NU2
• More generally, any text enclosed between angle brackets is removed, along with the < and > symbols themselves. 
  Example: john<martin>doe → johndoe 
• If a < symbol appears without a matching >, the < symbol and all following text are removed. 
  Example: jane<smith → jane

Handlebars / double curly braces ({{ }})

• Any text enclosed inside double curly braces  {{ }} is removed, along with the symbols themselves.
  Example: johndoe{{10}} → johndoe
• If the {{ symbols appear without a matching }}, nothing is removed. 
  Example: johndoe{{10→ johndoe{{10

Leading forward slashes (/)

• Any forward slashes at the beginning of the username are removed.
  Example: ////Test-NU2 → Test-NU2

Other special characters

• Equals signs (=) are removed.
• Leading and trailing spaces are automatically trimmed.

Please note: Usernames must also comply with the following validation rules: 

• Null values: Usernames cannot be empty 
• Length: Maximum of 255 characters.
• Uniqueness: Usernames must be unique across the platform.

Accordingly, any username containing special characters which after processing result in an empty value is not allowed. For example, a username consisting only of forward slashes (e.g., ///////)   or one beginning with a < symbol.
Similarly any username which after processing is no longer unique will result in an error. For example johndoe>2 when a user johndoe already exists, or ////janesmith when janesmith already exists