UMRA – Bulk Web Based User Management

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If you want to learn the basics on how to connect to UMRA with its COM object, please see my original post on “Basics of UMRA COM”.

UMRA – Bulk Web Based User Management

Most of my other blogs have been on some type of web based UMRA controlled actions on a one by one architecture. However, with today’s fast moving environment, I’ve noticed this process is no longer viable. One by one actions for single user control is fine, however there are times when you need to do bulk active directory user updates, or bulk active directory user syncs with other sytems such as Moodle, PowerSchool, PowerCampus, and other SIS (Student Information Systems). I’ve been tasked with creating a local school district a Web Based Portal using UMRA as the main sync tool between active directory and end users. Our client was currently using Visual Casel for most of its active directory management, and bulk update / delete tools, however the flexibility for the end user to have full control over the application and create more control options was just not there with Visual Casel. However, with creating a custom UMRA – Web Portal you are able to expand past other products pit falls, and really create dynamic and flexible user controlled options on the fly. So with this blog I will give you an idea of how you would go about creating a bulk management tool, that allows you to edit one, some, or all users in in your active directory environment.

UMRA – Bulk Web Based User Management How To

As I’ve said before, having any type of tool that allows you to edit all of your active directory users is great. However, with most of these active directory tools out there, are very limited in what they can do, and only target a specific task. But, with UMRA – Web Portal you are now able to really create either specific tasks for current work flows, and even have the ability to create new work flows in the future. You’re not going to be locked down with just a specific tool. Ok with that said, the main part of getting something like this to work is getting all the users in your active directory to display in some type of grid, or data panel. There are a lot of methods you can use to get this done, so depending on if you’re using asp asp.net php or some other type of programming language try to follow these steps at a high level.

Step 1: Build a UMRA Automation project to get all your users, or a subset of users in an OU. This will depend on who you want to show up in your list.

Step 2: Create your webpage either to loop through your UMRA Automation projects datatable of users. Now depending on how many users we are talking about, you can take this next step in a few ways.

Step 3: If you are dealing with more than 2000 records, you might want to wright this information to XML, or store it in a temporary database. Why you ask? Well, if you want to have sorting options, you don’t want to be running your UMRA Automation project over again just to sort, so grabbing the data quickly from XML or a database would dramatically speed up your steps.

Step 4: Either with CSS or Javascript, keep track of what items were selected in your grid. I used javascript to check each time a datarow was highlighted or deselected.

Step 5: Build your tool bar, or buttons to control and fire off the actions you want to perform.

Step 6: Build corresponding UMRA Automation projects to link up to your tool bar buttons actions.

So there you have it, that is a quick high level overview on how to create a nice and simple Build Web Based UMRA – Web Portal. Below are a few screen shots of how you might do your layout.