Custom field for lastpostedby

[SteveCoppin]

The username for our users to log in is their employee identification number. I check this against the LDAP store (via a plug in) and retrieve their full name and store it as a custom field and the number as their username. This part works great and I'm able to easily display the users full name on the individual posts, the welcome message and most places on the user profile.

However, there are several places it appears a lot harder to implement. For example: the last posters name for a forum or thread and the active users/who's online sections.

Does anyone have any advice on how I might be able to do this??

I've had a look in the templates but trying to track down the right piece of code for passing this information to the template has not been easy. I've also considered changing the php to, instead of entering the username in to the forum/thread, enter the custom field I have defined. With this method though I'm a bit worried about anything else I may disrupt..

Any advice would be much appreciated..