UPN <-> AD name how do you do it?

[tom_newton]

Chaps et Chapesses,

 

Quick question.

If I wanted to determine a student's UPN [yes, I mean unique pupil #, or the equivalent in your locale - thanks!] from AD, how would I do that? Do you folks generally maintain some link for MISy purposes? If so how is this managed?

 

Cheers,

 

Tom

Edited October 10, 2013 by tom_newton

[DT2]

Under the account tab in ADUC Edited October 10, 2013 by DT2

[pcstru]

We maintain a link from AD's employeeID (extended attribute) to the CMIS student or staff id. We don't maintain the UPN (or say NI number for staff) itself in AD.

 

So to answer the question - you would have to interrogate AD and then query the DB - or we would have to populate the UPN into AD, which given the above link would be easy enough.

Edited October 10, 2013 by pcstru

[sonofsanta]

By UPN do you mean User Principal Name ([email protected]) or Unique Pupil Number from the MIS?

 

Assuming the latter, we save it in the Office field in AD for use by the VLE in linking to Facility.

 

EDIT: thinking about it, that's a lie. The DfE assigned UPN isn't used anywhere, but their MIS ID is used in AD and the VLE (and the cashless catering, as it happens).

Edited October 10, 2013 by sonofsanta

[SYNACK]

If it's just a tech question then ldap to grab the required attributes stored in ad.

[LosOjos]

[All of the following assumes by UPN you mean Unique Pupil Number]

 

Just throwing this out there, but seriously consider why you want to use the UPN. Legally a UPN should not be shared with any organisation unless they're one of the official bodies, such as QCA, the LA or the DfE (how many companies immediately pop in to your mind who insist on having student's UPNs? I know I've had this argument with a few). It shouldn't even be shared with the student! (although of course if they put in an official and specific request for it under DPA you must give it to them)

 

Aside from that, a UPN isn't all that useful as an ID. New students might not be allocated their UPN for weeks, or issued a temporary one which will later change when the permanent one is obtained.

 

If the purpose is simply to have a consistent ID between AD and the MIS, I'd use something else. In SIMS, the admission number can cause problems - guest pupils do not get one. If you add yourself to the "Third Party Reporting" group, you'll see a Person_ID become available in reports - this is the one I always use as it's short, consistent and given to every student the moment they're added to the system.

 

Here's some info on UPNs and legality if anyone's interested: UPN policy and practice guidance - Data, research and statistics

Edited October 10, 2013 by LosOjos

[pete]

Yeah, don't use the UPN. Pick something that's not confidential data.

 

We use admission number, which (as mentioned above) does break with guest pupils, but it's meaningless outside our MIS.

[tom_newton]

I'll restate my question - given that Smoothwall knows a pupil by their AD creds, how would a MIS and Smoothwall best communicate about a student?

My theory was "MIS knows UPN, if Smoothie knows UPN, then we know who we are talking about with no ambiguity".

[sonofsanta]

MIS ID then, definitely. There is no other uniquely identifiable datum, given that the MIS is unaware of username/email.

 

Any such field would need to be alphanumeric in nature and also explicitly text, as some (but not all) of our student IDs have leading zeroes. Our staff codes are letters in the usual school format e.g. John Smith is JSM.

 

What mad plan do you have in mind, out of interest?

[pcstru]

I'll restate my question - given that Smoothwall knows a pupil by their AD creds, how would a MIS and Smoothwall best communicate about a student?

My theory was "MIS knows UPN, if Smoothie knows UPN, then we know who we are talking about with no ambiguity".

@LosOjos identifies the problems with UPN. I'm tempted to say student id - but it will depend on the MIS. In CMIS database for example, the field student_id will pull up multiple records, you need to know that you want their record for a particular dataset (academic year). I think SIMS internally uses a GUID which would take you to a unique student record. There may well be some legacy of the old student_id kicking around, but as I understand it, plugging directly into the SIMS database would be a no-no. SO the answer is going to be - depends on the actual MIS!

[bushby]

at my old place the UPN for the pupils from the MIS system was scripted the be added to the employee ID field in ad for the user via ADSI this was all for the vle to pull in the pupils details and auto enrol them to the lessons they had while still only linking the ad account to the lessons

 

i was only involved with this a little bit as i was still an apprentice but now wish i was more included with this

[Cache]

We don't have any link in place at the moment.

 

I have a plan to either link via some sort of unique ID or simply put the network username into SIMS in a UDF, however that is far from fruition at the moment.

[matt40k]

Stick the email address \ AD user in the MIS. Job done.

[bossman]

Our MIS is linked to our AD via the students unique ID created by our VLE and place in the Office tab of the AD user under General tab, only problem we get is if the student or user changes their name before they start at the school in year 7 apart from that it works very well indeed.

[Ephelyon]

We have no external tool to create the link so I've scripted it into the Pager field (as our Parental Portal, which is the only thing that currently needs it, works off that).

 

The attached batch file was used with the attached SIMS RptDef (both renamed to .txt for the forum) to do the initial UPN import across the school (picking off the few stragglers whose Forename and Surname fields in AD didn't correspond with the Legal Forename / Legal Surname fields in SIMS for some reason, by querying AD for pupil users with blank Pager fields once the routine had completed). Subsequently a similar routine was adapted for the ImportYear7.bat script that I run every summer plus the CreatePupil.bat script used for in-year admissions.

ImportPupilUPNs.txt

Student UPNs.txt