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Many people start out with Identity Manager with a simple implementation. They have an eDirectory tree. Maybe they need to add Active Directory to their environment. If they are following IDM's best practices, they build an ID Vault eDirectory tree. Using Designer, they set this up in a Project, and the parts are nicely represented on screen with application specific icons for the eDirectory and Active Directory drivers.

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As time goes on, new applications are added to the IDM Project in Designer. Success breeds further success, and the budding IDM developer starts finding more things around the office that need to be provisioned and deprovisioned and the project scope grows.

The more applications an IDM developer works with, the more likely that he will run in to one for which there is no application specific driver. It may be something small and relatively unimportant, or it may be some mission critical application that absolutely must be tied in to the IDM environment. Either one is OK, because the IDM Delimited Text driver can be used, and almost every application can import and export data in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format one way or another.

So the first purple icon appears in the Designer project. It is ok, as it is still pretty obvious which application this represents. It is not eDirectory, or Active Directory, or Notes; those all have their own icons. It becomes "the other one". But it is still obvious.

Then along comes another application that does not offer an API and for which there is no custom IDM driver. So another DelimText driver, and another purple icon. Still, not too bad. The developer can put one on the left, one on the right, and it is still visually obvious what is going on. Then comes the need to export IDM data to a CSV file for somebody that wants it all in a spreadsheet. And another DelimText driver is added to the project.

The strength of Designer and what makes it such a great tool for IDM development is this visual sense of what is connected where. It makes it possible, at a glance, to see how the applications relate to the ID Vault.

But, as these simple applications add up, pretty soon the proliferation of purple icons starts to crowd the display and to obscure this obviousness.

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The problem here is that the relationships are still visible, as they always are, but it is no longer as clear what applications are hooked to the ID Vault. There are too many of them that all appear to be the same, because they are all represented by the same icon.

Designer has a solution to this problem. Three of them actually.

Solution 1: Icon Replacement

In Designer, go to the driver to be changed, and open the Driver Properties (right click, go to Properties). On the General tab, you will be able to see the currently selected icon representing this driver.

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From here, you can browse the stock icons and select a different one.

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This might be handy if you are using a Delimited Text driver to connect to a system for which there is a custom driver. Or you may want to use this when prototyping a system where you will eventually be using one of the custom drivers, but for now are simulating it with CSV files. You could then just replace the icon with the one from that driver.

But if you are working with a system for which there is no custom driver, then what? Use the icon editor.

Solution 2: The Icon Editor

Designer has an Icon editor where you can replace the stock icon with a new one. It offers up a template blank icon, on which you can add other artwork. This option is great if you have or can get artwork easily. As an example, I will use Novell's nice red "N" logo to demonstrate.

Click on New:

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and Designer will bring up the editor with a template icon:

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From this point, you can click on the Browse button find an image, and overlay it on to the blank icon. The imported image should be about 40 pixels high, and about 50 pixels wide, so that it fits. A company's favicon.ico is often a great source of small logo images.

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Save this, and your driver now has a custom icon.

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It is now immediately obvious that this driver is not just like all of the others with the default purple Delimited Text icons.

The Icon Editor also allows you to overlay other stock images on to your artwork. Use the Overlay Images tab:

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to browse a selection of clipart. You can also add text to the icon via the Lables tab:

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Here I have used these two features to overlay an alien head and the "IDM" text on top of the "N" logo.

Solution 3: Making Icons and Importing Them

The only problem with the icon editor is that it presents a white icon over which you can overlay a smaller image. This leads to a lot of white icons. If you browse through the icons collection that comes with Designer, you will see that many of them are in other colours. So how do they do that? And, more importantly, how can you do it?

You will need a graphics editor. I use GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) but there are others that will work as well. Start by finding the set of icons that Designer comes with in the .../designer/eclipse/plugins/com.novell.core.iconeditor_3.0.1.200901050958/images/backgrounds/applications directory. Rather than starting from scratch, I find it easier to start by using one of these as a template. For example, starting with the NetScape directory icon:

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Copy this file elsewhere, open it in GIMP, edit out the "N" from the logo, and save this under a new name. Now you have a generic icon with an interesting background:

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Then use GIMP to open some other clipart, like our "N" we used earlier, resize or edit it as needed, then copy and paste it to the generic icon you just created:

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and you have a new and much more interesting custom icon. Save this file.

Now, in Designer, go to the properties of your driver, and use the "Browse" button:

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to go and find your custom icon. Save this change, and your driver now has a new icon established.

In a short while, the same project now looks like:

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This is, of course, a demonstration. The custom icons would be chosen to represent real applications and real systems. But the immediate visual impact of this change is clear. You can now see that this system is composed of many drivers, all of which are connecting to different systems.

This would work for other drivers as well. In an environment with multiple Active Directory domains, for example, it might be better to replace the stock MAD driver icon with one representing the organizations that use each of the domains.

You could, I suppose, go crazy with this, replacing all of the icons with Simpsons characters. This would be fun, perhaps, but not a good idea in the long term. The idea here is to add information to the display. To be useful, that information should be easy to understand and to relate something that helps the viewer make sense of what they are seeing. Adding a company logo, or something to denote the purpose of the driver adds useful information. Adding a Homer head adds information, but it is not useful information.