Views:

Applies To:

GroupID 10 – Self-Service

Business Case:

We have some groups that are created directly in Active Directory (AD) and then managed from GroupID. This is similar to a case when you are integrating GroupID in your environment for the first time, and you want to use GroupID to manage the existing AD groups.

The problem is, when you try to save any change to such a group from the GroupID Self-Service portal, the following error is displayed:

This article explains a workaround for this problem.

Methodology:

When a group is directly created in AD, it is picked up by GroupID once replication completes. However, the group's displayname is not populated in GroupID, as it is not a mandatory attribute for groups in AD.

For GroupID, displayname is a mandatory attribute as it is used to populate other attributes, such as alias, CN, etc. In AD, these attributes are populated directly either when you create the group or from Exchange.

Since displayname is a mandatory attribute for GroupID, the Self-Service portal won’t allow you to save any change to a group if this attribute is not populated. A simple way out is to populate the displayname to avoid confusion with such groups or directly create groups from the Self-Service portal. When this is not a possibility, you can just remove the displayname check from the portal.

Steps:

  1. In GroupID Management Console, select Self-Service > Portals > [required portal] > Designs, and then select an identity store.

  2. Select the Properties tab.

  3. From the Select Directory Object list, select Group.

  4. Select General and click Edit.

  5. On the Edit Category dialog box, select the Display name field and click Edit.

  6. On the Edit Field dialog box, click Advanced options and clear the Is Required check box.

  7. Click OK to close the dialog boxes.

  8. On the toolbar, click Save.

  9. Sign into your Self-Service portal. Now, you should be able to save your changes to a group even if the displayname is not populated.

    To apply this setting to Smart Groups, select Smart Groups from the Select Directory Object list (see step 3) and follow the steps till the end.

Note: These settings are tied to the portal, so if the portal is changed, you need to reapply them. Also, in case you have multiple GroupID servers with multiple portals, this change has to be applied to all portals.
Keywords: Selfservice, displayname, groups