The integration services described herein require additional one-time and/or annual fees. For more information, please contact us.
When the learning environment is integrated to your Active Directory (AD) via LDAPS, it can:
Auto-discover users in your AD and create their account in the learning environment (e.g. download their information)
Update the users' information in the learning environment (i) once a day (for all users) and (ii) every time the user logs in the learning environment (for that specific user account)
Authenticate the users directly against AD each and every time they try to log in the learning environment.
Rename users in the learning environment if they are renamed in Active Directory.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The learning environment doesn't download nor store the user's password. It sends a request to your AD server each and every time a user tries to log in.
User Information
In order for AD authentication to work, the learning environment needs to store some user information in its database. At a minimum, it needs the following information:
Username
First name
Last name
Email address
If this information is stored in your AD, then the learning environment can auto-discover users in your AD and create / update their account in the learning environment's database. Otherwise, if those 4 fields are not available, the learning environment can import user profile information from your HRIS (Human Resources Information System) or even a CSV file. The source of the information is not important, but it is important that the information be available. The learning environment will not create user accounts if any of the above 4 fields are missing.
The rest of the information (i.e. job title, department, telephone) is optional and does not need to be imported in the learning environment. If you decide not to import additional information however, please note that this information will not be available in the various reports available in the learning environment.
Assumptions
There are a couple of rules that need to be respected in order for the integration to work:
You must accept SSL requests (LDAPS) from the learning environment on a secure port (usually port 636). This means that your firewall will need to allow requests from the learning environment over a secure port (usually port 636).
You will need to create a non-privileged AD user account that will be used to bind the learning environment to AD. Make sure this account and its password do NOT expire. Should it expire, the synchronization and authentication of your users will no longer work.
Domain-Based Authentication
This feature is only available to organizations that have subscribed to the Multi-site version of the system. For more information, please contact us.
In a /wiki/spaces/Healthcare/pages/34844303, it's quite common for the learning environment to connect to multiple Active Directory servers. In many cases, there could be conflicts between the usernames across two or more Active Directory servers. For example, there could be a user with the username "jsmith" in both Active Directory servers.
The multi-site version of the learning environment supports domain-based authentication. When enabled, the system can allow two users with the same Active Directory username (e.g. samAccountName) to login the learning environment by specifying their domain as per the screenshot below.
