Hi there, we found in researching what we thought was a bug with showing first name in composing discussion response but showing preferred name when it saved and displayed to others wasn't actually a bug but just that the cache hadn't been recycled yet after updating preferred name. There should be no open issues with preferred name on either topic discussions or graded discussions. Kindly respond or open a support ticket if you are seeing otherwise so we can resolve. thanks!

I have one bug in for a fix that is that when the user is in the process of adding a comment it displays their first name to them, which we will get fixed asap. However, you can relay to your students that when their comment is saved it does display to others as their preferred name not their first name (this is both in graded discussion and discussions in topics).