Managing Business Objects

Business objects can be used to keep common information in a centrally located individual object. Examples of business objects include organizations, organizational units, countries, locations, and projects. Each business object has related information like a description, an address, and central communication data. A lot of this data can be part of user entries, and you can use business objects to help maintain this data consistently.

The source of business objects can be external data stores. You can use DirX Identity’s synchronization features to keep the data synchronized.

Business object management consists of the following tasks:

  • Maintaining an accurate and up-to-date directory of central data that can be used by user entries.

  • Optionally setting up workflows to synchronize data from external data sources.

  • Setting up event-based maintenance workflows that inherit privileges from business objects to users. See the chapter "Entry Change Workflows" in the DirX Identity Application Development Guide for more information.

  • Setting up event-based maintenance workflows that propagate attribute changes from business objects to users. See the chapter "Entry Change Workflows" in the DirX Identity Application Development Guide for more information.

Working with Business Objects

When you log into DirX Identity Provisioning and select Business Objects from the view bar, DirX Identity displays hierarchical trees of the business objects that you are allowed to manage in the left-hand pane.The following figure provides an example of this hierarchical tree.

Figure : Viewing the Business Object Structure with DirX Identity Manager

By default, the hierarchical tree represented in the DirX Identity sample domain provides trees for companies, cost-units, countries, and projects.You can create your own custom objects under the tree node Custom.

To view the properties of a business object, click its entry in the tree.DirX Identity also provides a search dialog that you can use to select and display a subset of these objects.When you select a business object, DirX Identity displays a property dialog for the object.The dialog typically consists of a set of tabs that you can use to view the object’s properties.Click the tabs in the property dialog to move between the different property categories.

About Business Object Types

DirX Identity comes with a set of standard business object types:

Companies - this tree can contain company (organization) objects including organizational unit objects.Use it to model your company’s organizational structure.

Cost-Units - this tree can contain a company’s cost center information.Use it to model your company’s cost-unit structure.

Countries - this tree can contain country and location objects.Use it to model your company’s regional distribution.

Projects - this tree can contain company project objects.Use it to define the various projects running in your organization.

You can use neutral folder objects to structure your object trees and you can change the look of the predefined business objects and add or remove attributes and links.

Use the Custom folder to define additional business objects of any type.Define the relevant object descriptions and create the instances in this subtree.Be sure to use the structural object type dxrContext, otherwise you cannot use the event-based workflows and the Web services for business objects.For custom attributes, set up auxiliary object classes.

Using Business Objects

Business objects help to simplify role assignment and reduce redundancy in your Identity Store.Information is kept once in one business object and is linked to (mastered by) other objects.Changing a business object triggers an immediate change of the mastered privileges and attributes.

Business objects typically come with a set of attributes (for example, the street and postal code for a locality).They also have links to other business objects or to privileges, which allows you to create complex linked structures of objects.

You can use business objects in several ways:

You can use a business object to automatically assign roles, permissions and groups referenced from the business object to all users linked to it.As a sample scenario, you may add the reference to a role to an organizational unit.This change triggers the appropriate event-based maintenance workflow, which automatically assigns this role to all users linked to the organizational unit.Working the other way, if you remove this role from the organizational unit, the same real-time workflow removes the role from all associated users.See the chapter "Entry Change Workflows" in the DirX Identity Application Development Guide for more information.

You cannot use roles with role parameters or privileges that are marked for approval.Web Center prohibits assignment of such privileges to business objects.DirX Identity Manager and metacp do not protect assigning such privileges.

You can use business object data in user attributes, and master data such as "address" or "street" from the business object. If you change the user object, this data is updated via DirX Identity’s master mechanism from the linked object. If you change the business object, an event-based workflow can help to synchronize the changed attribute to all linked user objects. See the chapter "Entry Change Workflows" in the DirX Identity Application Development Guide for more information.

You can use business objects as a source for role parameters. To use a business object as a role parameter, define it as a DN or a Hierarchical DN type.

You can use business objects as a source for proposal lists.