Interact Intranet: Mapping Active Directory fields

Every Interact customer that uses an Active Directory repository will at one time or another need to create and map fields.  The process can be tricky, so the purpose of this blog is to provide instructions on how to accomplish this task and some tips to help along the way. (note: this is done on 5.1.3 and the process might be different on other versions)

This diagram illustrates the relationship between the mapping steps detailed further below.

Fields

Three different fields need to be created for this process.

1. Profile field
   These fields are tied to user profiles, although you have the option on whether or not to display the data.
2. Active directory field
   This is behind the scenes field that users will never see.  Title it in a manner that will be intuitive to your Administrators.
3. Mapping field
   This is behind the scenes field that users will never see.  Title it in a manner that will be intuitive to your Administrators.  Not only does the name of this field appear as the mapping field, but also within the mapping table (in the step Mapping Your Fields Together below)

Naming Conventions 

I would recommend developing a naming convention to prevent confusion between these fields. Because they organize alphabetically a prefix would help keep fields of the same type together.

1. Profile field:
   Employee Type
2. AD field:
   AD Employee Type
3. Mapping field:
   Map Employee Type

Creating Fields

Profile field

1. Navigate to: Site Admin-> Manage People-> Manage Additional Fields
2. Click the New Field button and fill in the following information:
• Title
• Additional Field Type
• Once created this field is no longer editable
• Number of Rows
• Sets the size of the text-box field
• Icon
• Apply To (Staff/Contacts)
• Display on Profile
• Allow User Edit
• Regardless of how you set this, an admin can always override this field, even if it is mapped against AD, however each time AD syncs your changes will be overwritten
• Available To
• Restrict who can see the information (All, User, Manager, User & Manager)
3. Once created the new field will appear in the Additional Fields section of the edit profile area
4. Fields will not appear on a public profile unless they contain data

Mapping field

WARNING
Be extremely careful with these fields. Once created they cannot be edited nor deleted.

1. Navigate to: Site Admin-> Manage People-> Active Directory Sync
2. Select your domain
3. From the Options dropdown select Manage Field Mappings
4. From the Options dropdown select Manage Fields
5. Click the Add Field button and fill in the following information:
• Field Type: Additional Field
• Title
• Additional Field
• This maps against the Profile field
• Description
6. Click the Save button

Active Directory field

WARNING
Be extremely careful with these fields. Once created they cannot be edited nor deleted.

1. Navigate to: Site Admin-> Manage People-> Active Directory Sync
2. Select your domain
3. From the Options dropdown select Manage Field Mappings
4. From the Options dropdown select Manage Fields
5. Click the Add Field button and fill in the following information:
• Field Type: ACTIVE DIRECTORY
• Title
• Field
• Description
• Field Size
6. Click the Save button

Mapping Your Fields Together

The 4th and final step in this process is linking your Mapping field to your AD field.  To do this:

1. Navigate to: Site Admin-> Manage People-> Active Directory Sync
2. Select your domain
3. From the Options dropdown select Manage Field Mappings
4. Click the Add Mapping button and fill in the following information:
• Interact Field
• this ties to the Mapping field above
• Active Directory Field
• this ties to the Active Directory field
5. Click the Save button

Now you can sit back and wait for your Interact instance to synchronize with your Active Directory repository!

Test

Now that you've mapped all of these fields you probably don't want to wait for them to sync with AD at 1am or whenever your sync has been scheduled.  You can force your AD sync job to run by going to your front end server, opening the scheduled tasks utility and running it once manually.

 Further Reading (login required)

Interact covers these steps in: How to Create and Map a New Active Directory Field to a New Interact Field