What is Active Directory (AD)?
Active Directory (AD) is a Microsoft directory service used in the Windows environment; it centralizes all data from the resources available on the network, such as user accounts, computers, groups, security policies, etc. It also simplifies and organizes the access to the database, reinforcing security against phishing and restricting access to internal users. This article shows how to integrate and access data from Active Directory via Elipse E3.
Communication E3-AD
From version 5.6 on
Since Elipse E3 version 5.6’s release, you have been able to register Windows user groups as Elipse E3 groups.
When creating the new group, you will need to pick the type of group (Windows or E3) for the register. Depending on your choice, a new window will pop up. After that, the users are authenticated in Elipse E3 as a batch, not individually. However, these unregistered users will inherit the permissions that are specific to their groups, and can’t work as administrators.
To validate the groups, access the Windows’s group edition window (at the AD server); it also allows looking for a specific group in an AD server, as well as adding to (or removing from) Elipse Ee members of the group in question.
Versions 5.5 or lower
For previous versions of the software, integration between Elipse E3 users and Windows’ Active Directory (AD) will take place at user validation level, while ignoring groups/hierarchy settings. Therefor, you will need to create the hierarchy structure of groups and users integrated to AD manually.
The user registry at Active Directory restricts the access to information logically, and its goals differ from the goals of the application. One way to speed up the login procedure is to authenticate the user’s Windows credentials.
If you want to integrate to AD users dynamically, you must query it dynamically (for example, via scripts), according to the demo application below. To validate and store a user/groups/security policies database, use external data that are not from E3 users’ native database.
The demo application below illustrates how to integrate E3 and AD. We developed it with Elipse E3 version 4.8 build 300.
Reference: Script resources for IT professionals at the Microsoft website.
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