OpenFire claims invalid JID with . in local part

We are deploying OpenFire with LDAP integration and have come upon what appears to be a bug. Our LDAP usernames are first.lastname@domain.TLD. When running the install and adding administrative users we are unable to do so as it returns an error indicating invalid JID. We are able to add users without “.” in the local part of the username structure. I have found no information to suggest that having a “.” in the username would result in an invalid JID. Is this a bug / design flaw or is this intended behavior ? Is there any way we can implement a patch / work around ?

I have the same problem.