"There are illegal characters present in the userName field. Please type-in proper userName."

You can add the character to the list of allowed characters by editing the Login-validation.xml file.   This file may be located in the location where your application server has deployed the self service application.  The location varies according to the type of application server and the way it was deployed.  For example for Apache Tomat the file would be located in the following directory.

"C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Tomcat 6.0\webapps\axm-selfservice-gui\WEB-INF\classes\sirrus\selfservice\actions\Login-validation.xml"

Edit the file and add additional characters to the "allowedCharacters" parameter as required.

<!DOCTYPE validators PUBLIC "-//OpenSymphony Group//XWork Validator 1.0.2//EN" 

"<http://www.opensymphony.com/xwork/xwork-validator-1.0.2.dtd>"> 

<validators>

<field name="userName">

<field-validator type="validuserid">

<param name="allowedCharacters">-</param>

<message key="selfservice.err.illegalcharacters"></message>

</field-validator>

</field>

<field name="password">

<field-validator type="requiredstring">

<message key="selfservice.err.password"></message>

</field-validator>

</field>

</validators>