Tool to sync AD with MIS / external source

[baronne]

Hi,
We're in the process of pruning and tidying the AD in preparation for SharePoint 2007. Our AD is out of sync with our MIS (we use a system called PASS which runs on a SQL Server 2000 back-end).
I'm after a tool to easily synchronise the Active Directory user accounts with accounts on the school MIS system.
Does anybody know of such a tool?
If not what suggestions might y'all have?

cheers

baronne

[plexer]

Do your usernames follow a format that is in your mis then?

Ben

[CyberNerd]

We have such a tool, it was internally developed (not by me) for CMIS/AD integration -not sure if it's been updated much since then.
I posted it here:
http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?nam...ewtopic&t=3455

[baronne]

Do your usernames follow a format that is in your mis then?

Ben

unfortunately not... it's never been captured into the MIS.
So I expect a manual process of entering their usernames into the database.

...hmmm

[baronne]

We have such a tool, it was internally developed (not by me) for CMIS/AD integration -not sure if it's been updated much since then.
I posted it here:
http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?nam...ewtopic&t=3455

cheers.. I'm not a developer, so that's a bit of a mouthful all that code, but I guess one could slowly but surely keep at it. However, fiddling about with the live system, I'm not sure I want to do...........

baronne

[plexer]

I was just wondering how you track a user between your MIS and the AD I suppose you could add their UPN in the description of somewhere to tie those 2 together if there is no direct correlation.

Ben

[baronne]

nothing has ever been done to link the two together... this is the first instance of trying to get some unity between the systems and keep some sort of order among the (slight) chaos.

I'm gonna go for a manual approach to tidy first and then once it is sorted, I can work on a way of tracking & sync'ing accounts

baronne

[CyberNerd]

- As plexer suggests, our tracking uses the individual student UPN (the MIS one, NOT the userprinciplename) in CMIS. The MIS UPN is put into the EmployeeID field in Active Directory.

[baronne]

When I look at my user objects in AD I don't see an EmployeeID... does one need to dig into ADSIEDIT or something? Also... is it possible then to have a custom field in Active Directory?

[Geoff]

does one need to dig into ADSIEDIT or something?

I'd suggest you look at it via LDAP instead. It's a lot clearer that way.

Also... is it possible then to have a custom field in Active Directory?

You'd have to extend the schema to do that.

[baronne]

I'd suggest you look at it via LDAP instead. It's a lot clearer that way.

I may sound like a newbie here, but how to you look at it via LDAP?

cheers
Baronne

[plexer]

In that case I'd suggest very carefully

Ben

[Geoff]

Download Softerra's LDAP Browser.

http://www.ldapbrowser.com/download.htm

[baronne]

Check out ManageEngine's ADManager Plus
http://manageengine.adventnet.com/pr...elp/index.html

I've had this tool on my machine for some time and it looks like this may make things a little easier for me. I've just never really looked at it properly. but it is handy for creating bulk users and it also has a bulk modify thingy, so I can export from our MIS to CSV and then use ADManager to do the business!

cheers
baronne

[PiqueABoo]

Download Softerra's LDAP Browser.

That has a home in my penstick toolbox.. routine trawls through normal ADs are fine, but the schema won't expand fully without fiddling with the DS search limit.

I've only wanted that for obscure reasons on a couple of occasions and I'm not sure how advisable this is on serious production boxes, but increasing the search limit with ntdsutil from 1000=>1500 works for me.