Article

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Authors:
Chendil Kumar
Vishwanath Kalavar

Chendil Kumar and Vishwanath Kalavar explain how to use Project Checker in IDM Designer 3.0.

Contents

Introduction
What is Project Checker?
     How to enable PC?
     How to run PC?
     How to view PC results?
     PC message Context menu support
     Limitations

Introduction

Presently, users can easily design, test, deploy, and maintain the Novell Identity Manager product by using Designer. However when project size increases, the project complexity also increases accordingly and any tool that allows the user to check the project before deployment definitely helps.

What is Project Checker?

Designer provides a feature called Project Checker (hereafter referred as PC). By using this feature, users can check the project before deployment. PC checks for proper design, contexts, server associations, policies, missing user data, and dependency problems that can cause a project deployment into the Identity Vault to fail. Users can check a project at any time. However, it must be run before the deployment..

How to enable PC?

After a user opens the Designer, he or she can enable PC from the menu as follows.

1. Window > Show View > Project Checker. If Project Checker view is already opened in the Designer, then a user can ignore this step.



Click to view.

Figure 1.0 Project Checker view after enabling.

2. By default, users see the message “Results non-filtered: ( 0 items )” because PC is not running on the current project. The PC window has three columns namely Severity, Description and Model object. The Severity column displays the severity of the PC message..
   • The Description column displays the description of the message.
   • The Model object column displays the name of the model object which caused the message.

   Note: Individual column can be resized as needed.

How to run PC?

1. In the Project view or Outline view, select the project, then click the Project Checker icon in the Project checker view. If you haven’t saved the project, Designer prompts you to save it.



Click to view.

Figure 1.1 Save project before running Project Checker.

PC ensures that the underlined project is saved before running. Once the run completes Project Checker, messages are listed in the window as shown in Figure 1.1.

How to view PC results?

When a user runs the PC for a selected project, the PC checks the entire project and displays a list of version conflicts, errors, warnings, and information messages about the project. If PC does not find any of the above then it will not display messages.

In the Project Checker view, you can do the following actions:

View detailed PC results

User can double click on the PC message, which brings the properties window that displays the following information about the entry:

• The message severity
• A message description
• The model object that caused the message
• The line number where the problem occurred. This is not populated as of now
• Details about the problem, if available
• A recommended solution for the problem, if available

Click to view.

Figure 1.2 Detailed Project Checker results

Sorting the PC results

Users can sort the list by clicking on any header in the PC to sort the entry list on that parameter: Severity, Description and Model Object. The default sort is by severity in descending order (most current at the top of the list.)

Filtering PC results

When users finds it difficult to handle huge PC messages, they can Configure Filters and specify the types of messages they are interested in.

For more details on how to set filters refer to the section “Configure Filter”.

Clearing PC results

Clear Results icon clears the PC entry in the list.

Saving PC results

User can save all the PC results to a file by using Save Project Checker Results to a File icon in tool bar. Contents can be saved into text format so that it can be viewed off line. The individual PC results can also be saved into a file by selecting the individual message and right mouse click save operation.

Click to view.

Figure 1.3 Save Project Checker Results.

The Menu allows the following:

• View the messages in a hierarchical layout , according to functions (Identity Manager, provisioning, etc.)
• View the messages in a flat layout (default).
• Automatically check the project when you save it.
• Configure filters
• View the Project Checker’s Preferences page.
• Click Menu > Hierarchical Layout displays the messages under the Identity Manager and Provisioning headings.
• Click Menu > Flat Layout displays all messages within the hierarchical structure.
• Click Menu > Auto-check on Save automatically checks your project every time you save.
• Click Menu > Preferences limits the number of messages that are visible. The default is 100 items.
• Click Minimize/Maximize to minimize and maximize the PC window using the tool bar icons.

PC message Context menu support:

Users are allowed to do context operations on each PC message or multiple messages at a time. The Ctrl and Shift keys allow to select multiple messages at a time. The supported context menu operations now are:

• Properties: Opens the message properties window.
• Copy: Copy selected single or multiple messages.
• Save: Save the copied contents to a file.
• Select All: Selects all the available messages in the window.
• Go To feature has not been implemented yet.
• The Quick Fix feature has not been implemented yet.

Click to view.

Figure 1.3 Save Project Checker Results.

Figure 1.4 Project Checker Results context menu operations.

Configure Filter: The Configure Filter allows the user to view messages he is interested in, for instance, if he wants to view only high severity messages then he can set the filter for Error.

User can configure the filter in two ways.

• Click on the Configure Filters icon on the Tool bar.
• Menu > Configure Filters

Users are allowed to create and edit filters. Multiple filters are allowed to be created, however only one filter can be enabled at a time for a current project.

Creating Filters

To create a filter:

1. In the Project Checker, click the Configure Filters icon .
2. Click New Filter.
3. Specify a name and description for the filter.
   You can select the items, the types of messages returned about the items, and also use key words to limit the messages returned. For example, you can search for all messages about the Driver Set and Driver objects that contain the word “attribute.”
4. Click OK.

Click to view.

Figure 1.5 Create Filter in Project Checker.

Editing a filter

To edit the name and description of the filter:

1. Select the filter, then click Edit.
2. After you have completed the changes, click OK.

Click to view.

Figure 1.6 Edit Filter in Project Checker.

Deleting a Filter:

To delete a filter:

1. Select the filter.
2. Click Delete.

Limitations:

• Currently PC runs on entire project and it is not possible to run on the individual component at a time.
• Currently pagination of the PC results pages are not supported, if huge numbers of messages are listed then the user has to scroll the window to see the later messages.

Note: This document explains only about the Designer Project Checker and it does not explain about the Provisioning Project Checker.

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.