Arlen's original comments (from Slack):

1. To get this to work, I had to unlock the field in the view. I could not determine how to get around that - possibly I haven’t correctly made the field output look exactly like it would be from Cake. (See: https://github.internet2.edu/COmanage/registry/pull/316/files#diff-19b82a055c6b965b53fd7cca04e59480542c74f9c6f79a63af9b00528ab1c01e )
2. The people picker (working against the API) does not appear to be finding Person information as I expect it to do. I re-linked an external Identity from one person to another in my set, but when I try to link it back, the search only finds the new person. It’s as if the ApiV2Controller::pick() action only is finding the underlying MVEAs from the External Identities…
3. I left the current implementation of the people picker mostly alone - so I kept the new StringUtilities function. The autocomplete widget from PrimeVue can be set up within a javascript context to return a specific field - but I did not pursue that yet (because the first two items above need to be examined more). I also did not change the Manager and Sponsor pickers to use the new StringUtilities function (yet).

Simplified and rebased against the latest develop. The original comment (above) from Slack is largely no longer accurate. (1) is outdated - there is no unlocking. (2) Is not a correct description, but there are some peculiarities when searching with the picker (I'll create a different ticket as this gets tracked down), and (3) is also outdated. The new string utilities function is not needed (and has been removed from this PR).