User Management Resource Administrator supports the creation of unique
usernames automatically. This features is mainly used when creating user
accounts in Active Directory or NT4 domains. In these environments, a
user account has multiple names. Some of these names must be unique, e.g.
no user accounts with the same names might exist. To generate these names
automatically and to make sure they are unique, User Name uses name
generation algorithms.
Name Generation Algorithms
A name generation algorithm is a set of rules that define how one ore
more names can be composed from other names and how the resulting names
can be made unique. Example: when creating user accounts in Active Directory
2 names must be unique. For this moment, we use the terminology Username
and Full name
for these names. For user accounts that are generated from a input file,
most times the input data contains the First
name, Middle name, Last name or
a similar set of names. To generate the unique names, the name generation
algorithm takes the three input names and according to the rules of the
name generation algorithm it composes the 2 output names. Next, if the
names are not unique, the algorithm continues to iterate the generation
cycle until the names are unique.
In User Management Resource Administrator, the number of input and output
names, the methods used to convert the input names to output names and
the way the names are made unique are completely configurable. All these
configuration settings together are called a name
generation algorithm. Name generation
algorithms can be stored in files (.uga extension) and multiple name generation
algorithms are shipped with User Management Resource Administrator. In
most organizations, a policy is used how the user account names need to
be composed. By choosing and perhaps customizing one of these algorithms
you can let User Management Resource Administrator create unique
names that adhere to your company's syntax requirements.
To choose an algorithm, select Tools,
Options from the main menu.
Next, select tab Name generation
and press the Manage button:
The window shows example values for
the input names and a list with available algorithms and the results of
these algorithms according to the specified values for the input names.
By specifying values for the %FirstName%, %MiddleName% and %LastName%
variables you can see the results of each of the available name generation
algorithm. From this window, you can Add,
Edit, Delete and Copy algorithms.
It is advised to copy algorithms first before you customize them.
In practice, User Management Resource Administrator uses variables to
specify the input and output names of algorithms. So the input names of
the algorithm are specified by passing variables. The results of the name
generation algorithm is stored as a value for other variables. For more
information on variables, see Project
operations - Variables.
