The principle of an UMRA mass project
is best explained by describing an example. Suppose, you want to create
a number of user accounts in Active Directory, and setup an Exchange mailbox,
home directory and group memberships for the new accounts. To fulfill
this task in User Management Resource Administrator, a project as shown in the window below is used:
Each User Management Resource Administrator project contains 3 main
items:
Input
data (upper part of project window)
Script
(lower left part of project window)
Link between script
and input data (column header of upper part window)
Input data
The Input data, usually obtained
from a file or network operation, specifies the user accounts that must
be created. The input data has a tabular form and is shown in the upper
part of the project window. The input data is line oriented and has the
same format for every line. In the described example, each line of the
input data corresponds with a single user account. For each user account,
the necessary information must be specified. Further, the input data can
contain additional information that is not required or used to create
the account. By default, de input data of a project is a (link to a) file.
For more information on input data, see Input
data
Scripts, actions and properties
For each user account, a number of actions
are performed: the account is created in Active Directory, an Exchange
mailbox is created, the home directory is created and group memberships
are setup. All of these actions
are contained in the script of the project. By default, the script actions
are executed one after the other but programming actions are available
to control the order of action execution. Together, the script
actions form the script of the
User Management Resource Administrator project.
Each script action has a number of
predefined properties. For instance, the script action Create user in Active Directory has a property that specifies the name of
the organizational unit in which the user is created. Some of the properties
of an action are mandatory, others are optional. For instance, to create
a user account in Active Directory, the name of the organizational unit
or domain must be specified. But a value for the description of the user is not required.
The Input data, usually obtained
from a file, specifies the data that is different for each user account
that must be created. In this sample project, the input data for instance
contains the lastname, firstname, phone
number for each user account. It is obvious that this type of information
differs for each user account. The Script
specifies the actions that must be executed for each
line of the input data, e.g.
for each user account. In this project the script contains the
following actions: Create user (AD),
Create Exchange mailbox, Create
directory and so on. Each script action contains a number of properties
(lower right part of project window). The properties for each action are
shown when the action is selected in the lower peft part of the project
window . An example of a property is the SurNameof the action Create
user (AD). When all properties of an action are specified, User
Management Resource Administrator can execute the action.
Two different types of properties exist:
Properties
that have a constant value: For these properties, the value should
be the same for each user account that is created. Examples: the name of the domain, the name
of the Exchange server, the setting User
cannot change password.
Properties that
have no constant value: For these properties, the value is different
for each line of the input data. Examples: Given-name,
SurName, phone number.
In UserManagement, properties of both types are specified using variables.
For properties with a constant value, the variable can be assigned a value
in the beginning of the script. Example: %Domain%=SEASONS. For this type
of properties, the variable is assigned the same value each time the script
is executed. For properties that have no constant value, the value
must correspond with a column of the input data. For
every line of the input data, the variable is assigned a different value.
Example: the action Create user
(AD) contains the property SurName.
In this project, the value of this property is set equal to the (value
of) variable %LastName%. (see project window). The second column
of the input data corresponds with this variable. When the script execution
is started, the first line of the input data is read and the variable
is set to: %LastName%=Williams. Then if the Create
user (AD) action is executed,
the property is set to: SurName=%LastName%=Williams
-> SurName=Williams.
When creating projects in User Management
Resource Administrator, you have complete freedom to use and specify variables,
manipulate the value of variables and assign variables to input data columns.
The resulting project script can be seen as a black box that performs
a specific task when feeded with values for the input variables. In this
project, the task is the creation of the user account and properties,
home directory, group memberships and Exchange mailbox. Some of the variables
used in the script are specified as constants, the other variables get
a value from the input data.
To create the user accounts and resources,
the script is executed for each
line of input data. So for each
input line from the input data, User Management Resource Administrator
reads the value for each column. This data is the input data for the script
and is feeded
to the script. The script actions are then executed one by one. Then the
process starts over again with the next line of the input data.
Values and variables
To setup a script action, you must
setup each property of the script action. A property is setup by specifying
the value of the property. The value of a property can be specified by
one of the following:
Constant
value: When the value should
be the same each time the script is executed. Example: the name of the
domain, or a flag indicating if the user must reset the password.
No
constant value: The value is
different each time the script is executed. Example: The first name of
the user account.
No value (optional property values only): The property
is not used in this script. Example: The Active Directory attribute that
specifies the telephone number of the user account.
To specify the values, variables can be used. A variable is a placeholder
for the actual value. A variable has a name that is normally enclosed
with %-characters. Examples: %Domain%, %FirstName%, %LastName%, %ExchangeServer%.
At runtime, the application replaces the variable name by the actual value:
%Domain%=tools4ever.com, %FirstName%=John etc. Both for constant and non-
constant property values, variables
can be used. For constant values, the property value is specified as a
variable name and the variable's value is assigned as a script action
in the beginning of the script. For non-constant values, the property
value is specified as a variable
that corresponds with a column of the input data.
In the figure shown, the input data
contains a column linked to variable %LastName%. The script of the project
contains the property SurName in script action Create
user (AD). By resolving the
variable, the property gets a value that equals the value of the corresponding
column of the input data
