19.1 About the Provisioning Teams Plug-Ins

The Requests & Approvals tab in the Identity Manager User Application includes a group of actions called My Team’s Work. The My Team’s Work actions allow you to work with team member tasks and requests in a workflow.

To configure provisioning teams, you need to use the Provisioning Team and Provisioning Team Requests plug-ins to iManager. The Provisioning Team plug-in lets you define the characteristics of a team. The Provisioning Team Requests plug-in lets you specify the request rights for a team.

NOTE:A team requests object must be defined for each team definition. Any provisioning team without a team requests object will not be available for use within the User Application.

You can find the Provisioning Team and Provisioning Team Requests plug-ins in the Identity Manager category in iManager. These plug-ins are listed under the Provisioning Configuration role.

19.1.1 About Teams

A team identifies a group of users and determines who can manage provisioning requests and approval tasks associated with this team. The team definition consists of a list of team managers, team members, and team options, as described below:

  • The team managers are those users who can administer requests and tasks for the team. Team managers can also be given permission to set proxies and delegates for team members. Team managers can be users or groups.

  • The team members are those users who are allowed to participate on the team. Team members can be users, groups, or containers within the directory. Alternatively, they can be derived through directory relationships. For example, the list of members could be derived by the manager-employee relationship within the organization. In this case, the team members would be all users that report to the team manager.

    NOTE:The Provisioning Application Administrator can configure the directory abstraction layer to support cascading relationships, in which case several levels within an organization can be included within a team. The number of levels to include is configurable by the administrator.

  • The team options determine the provisioning request scope, which specifies whether the team can act on an individual provisioning request, one or more categories of requests, or all requests. The team options also determine whether team managers can set proxies for team members or set the availability of team members for the purpose of delegation.

    NOTE:The User Application only supports a single level for proxy assignments. Proxy assignments are not propagated to multiple levels.

The Provisioning Application Administrator can perform all team management functions.

The team definition itself is managed within iManager by one or one administrative managers.

Distinction between teams and groups Although a team can sometimes refer to a group in the Identity Vault, a team is not the same thing as a group. When you define a group in the Identity Vault, you identify a set of users that have something in common. However, the group does not automatically have the capabilities of a team within the User Application. To take advantage of the team capabilities within the User Application, you must define a team that points to the group.

19.1.2 About Team Request Rights

The team requests object specifies a list of requests that fall within the domain of a team, as well as the rights given to the team managers. The request rights specify the actions that team managers can perform on the provisioning requests and tasks.

The team definition has a one-to-many relationship with the team requests object. This means that each team must have at least one team requests object associated with it, but can have more than one team requests object. Each team requests object is associated with only one team definition.

The following task scope options are configurable for team managers:

  • The ability to act on tasks where the team member is an addressee

  • The ability to act on tasks where the team member is a recipient

    WARNING:For security reasons, the recipient task scope option is disabled by default. Giving a team manager the ability to act on tasks where the recipient of the request is a team member can raise several security issues. First, the manager is then able to view data included on any of the forms that are displayed during the course of workflow execution, regardless of his or her trustee rights. Second, depending on the permission options (see below), a team manager could circumvent the approval process by claiming or approving the task, or by reassigning it to someone else.

If both of the task scope options described above are disabled, the team manager cannot view or act on any active requests. Therefore, team managers will typically want to have at least one of these options enabled.

The following permission options are configurable for team managers:

  • The ability to initiate a provisioning request on behalf of a team member.

  • The ability to retract a provisioning request on behalf of a team member.

  • The ability to make a team member a delegate for other team members’ provisioning requests.

  • The ability to claim a task for a team member who is a recipient or addressee (based on the task scope).

  • The ability to reassign a task for a team member who is a recipient or addressee (based on the task scope).

NOTE:The User Application only supports a single level for delegate assignments. Delegate assignments are not propagated to multiple levels.

The trustee rights defined for a provisioning request apply to team managers who want to initiate a request on behalf of their team members.

19.1.3 Using a Team to Manage Direct Reports

You can define a team that allows managers throughout an organization to control the provisioning environment for their direct reports. If defined properly, a single team definition can be used to allow all managers to control the activities of their direct reports, thereby removing the need to define a separate team for each reporting relationship.

Here are the basic requirements for a team that supports direct reports within an organization:

  • The members of the team are defined by the Manager-Employee relationship.

  • The managers of the team are defined by a dynamic group that searches subcontainers, using a a search filter that retrieves only the managers.

After the team has been defined, the User Application allows all managers to use the team management actions within the navigation menu. This gives the managers the ability to control the provisioning activities that their direct reports can perform.

For details on how to define a team to manage direct reports, see Section 19.4, Creating a Team to Manage Direct Reports.

NOTE:This technique replaces the notion of an organizational team supported in earlier releases of the Identity Manager User Application.