How To: Enable Group Owner Suggestion in the Self-Service Portal

Applies To:

GroupID 10 – Self-Service

Business Scenario:

As a common scenario, groups get orphaned and stay in the directory as such, unnoticed and unattended. After all, users come and leave, and its virtually impossible for network administrators to keep a manual check on all directory groups.

But even when you claim to vigilantly monitor group ownership to pinpoint orphan groups, there is still a trap. How to come up with the most appropriate choice for the group owner? What parameters should come into play when promoting a user or group as a group owner?

Well, GroupID saves your nerves by giving simple, automated, data-driven solutions.

Solution:

GroupID can help you deal with the orphan group challenge in two distinct ways:

• Define an Orphan Group Update job for an identity store and schedule its runs.
  The GroupID administrator can define this job in GroupID Management Console. When this job runs, it scans orphan groups in the directory and automatically assigns an owner to each of these.

• Enable Group Owner Suggestion in the Self-Service portal.
  The GroupID Self-Service portal can dynamically suggest an owner for an orphan group. Unlike the Orphan Group Update job that sets a group owner without user intervention, the Owner Suggestion feature allows the user to choose an owner from a list of suggested users. GroupID conjures up this list by taking the group membership into account, ranking stronger matches at the top.

This article focuses on the owner suggestion solution for dealing with orphan groups.

Group Owner Suggestion Configuration:

To enable the Self-Service portal to present group owner suggestions, you must enable the Suggest Owner/Manager setting for a portal.

1. In GroupID Management Console, select Self-Service > Portals > [required portal] > Server.
2. Click the Settings tab and scroll down to the Suggest Owner/Manager setting.
   This setting sets the Self-Service portal to suggest owners for orphan groups and managers for users without managers.
   
   
    
3. Select the True option button to allow GroupID to suggest a primary owner for an orphan group (on the Owner tab in group properties).
   The owner is suggested with respect to the group’s membership; GroupID checks the managers of group members and the user who shows up most as a manager is suggested as the group owner. This user may or may not be a member of the group.
   
   Example:
   When 40 members of Group A have User A as their manager and 38 members have User B as a manager, User A is suggested as Group A’s primary owner. User A may not necessarily be a member of Group A.
4. Click the Save icon on the toolbar.
5. The owner suggestion function works for all identity stores linked to this portal.
   On the Identity Stores tab, make sure that your required identity store is linked.

How Owner Suggestion works in the Portal:

Log into the Self-Service portal. Go to the properties page of an orphan group and click the Owner tab.

Notice that an owner has been suggested for the group.

• Click Make Owner to set the suggested user as the group's primary owner.
• If you want to look at more options before setting an owner, click Show more options to view a list of suggested owners.

Once you’re done, make sure you save the information.

Reference:

GroupID Online Help topic: Using Advanced Settings