Internal Service Management
This use case explains how to use the internal service management component of DirX Identity.
Detailed Definition
In most cases you want changes in your identity solution to be effective immediately in real-time but there are situations where it makes sense to delay changes to some time in the future. If you have no means to delay these changes you have to note the changes somewhere, wait until the time comes and then you can perform the changes at the right time.
Of course this procedure is not convenient at all. Use DirX Identity’s internal service management component to manage such situations.
Typical situations are:
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A person moves from one department to another one. This change includes a change of his privileges. In this case his data, for example his department number as well as some privileges will change at the expected time of the move because the tasks in the new department might be different.
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Someone changes his location. This results in a change of his address that means eventually the country, the location, the building and the room number. Additionally, his communication data like the telephone number could change.
In both cases it is possible to define the necessary changes some time before the move or change. DirX Identity services process all changes fully automatically at the defined due date.
Evaluation of this Use Case
This section elaborates on advantages and disadvantages of this solution.
Advantages
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Fully and smoothly integrated solution. No external components required.
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Low effort to setup.
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Complete audit integration.
Disadvantages
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Restricted customization capabilities compared to external service management solutions.
Additional Documentation
Besides the information in this document you can find additional documentation in the DirX Identity documentation:
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Read the follow-on tutorial "Working with Internal Tickets" in the DirX Identity Tutorial. Perform the example use case in the sample domain to understand the feature.
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Read the description of the relevant workflow in the DirX Identity Application Development Guide. Read the section "Process Tickets Internal Workflow" in the chapter "Understanding the Maintenance Workflows".
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You can find additional information in the chapter "Managing Tickets" in the DirX Identity Provisioning Administration Guide.
Set Up and Configuration
You have to set up
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The Process Internal Ticket workflow that will process your tickets.
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A daily schedule that runs this workflow regularly.
Setup the Process Internal Ticket Workflow
Copy the prepared template ProcessTicketsInternal Workflow into your solution.
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In the Connectivity view group click the Global View.
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We assume that you have already established a corresponding connectivity scenario for your provisioning domain.
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Select your scenario and click the workflow line between the two Identity Stores.
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Select New from the line’s context menu.
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Choose ProcessTicketsInternal from the list and click Next.
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Adapt the Name and Description fields and set the Active flag.
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Click Finish.
Your instance of the ticket processing workflow for internal tickets is ready to run.
Setup a Schedule
To setup a schedule for the previously copied workflow perform these steps:
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Select the Expert View.
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Create under the Schedules node in the respective scenario folder for your provisioning domain a new schedule.
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Set the Workflow link to the ticket processing workflow and set a Start Time. It makes sense to run the workflow during the night to reduce load during daytime. Note that the Time Interval is already set to 24:00:00 which is correct for a daily running workflow.
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Do not set the Active flag at this time because we want to test our solution first.
Running the Use Case
To run the use case you need to create and change objects with a Due Date. Here are some useful examples:
Changing a user’s attribute:
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Change a user’s room number and set the Due Date to today.
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View the newly created ticket with the DirX Identity Manager.
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Run the ticket processor workflow to process the ticket.
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Check the user and the ticket after processing.
Adding a role without approval to a user:
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Assign a role that is not flagged for approval to a user and set the Due Date to today.
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View the newly created ticket with the DirX Identity Manager.
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Run the ticket processor workflow to process the ticket.
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Check the user and the ticket after processing.
Adding a role with approval to a user:
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Assign a role that is flagged for approval to a user and set the Due Date to today.
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View the newly created ticket with the DirX Identity Manager.
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Check that a corresponding approval workflow was started that is referenced from the ticket.
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Approve the assignment request.
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View the user: nothing happened up to now.
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Run the ticket processor workflow to process the ticket.
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Check the user and the ticket after processing.
If you want to run other ticket examples, perform tests with these objects and attributes.
After doing these tests, activate the previously established schedule and your solution is ready to run.