1.1 Identity Manager and you
Novell Identity Manager is a system software product that
your organization uses to securely manage the access needs
of its user community. If you’re a member of
that user community, you benefit from Identity Manager in a number
of ways. For example, Identity Manager enables your organization
to:
- Give users access to the information (such
as group org charts, department white pages, or employee lookup)
and resources (such as equipment or accounts
on internal systems) that they need, right from day one
- Synchronize multiple passwords into a single
login for all your systems
- Modify or revoke access rights instantly
when necessary (such as when someone transfers to a different group
or leaves the organization)
- Support compliance with government
regulations
To bring these benefits directly to you and your team, Identity
Manager provides a user interface that you
can use from your Web browser.
1.1.1 Introducing the Identity Manager user
interface
The Identity Manager user interface is your view into the
information, resources, and capabilities of Identity Manager. Your system
administrator determines the details of what you can
see and do in the Identity Manager user interface. Typically, this
includes:
- Identity self-service,
which enables you to:
- Display organization charts
- Edit the information in your profile
- Search a directory
- Change your password
- Create accounts for new users (if you are authorized)
- Requests and approvals, which
enable you to:
- Issue requests for resources
- Check on the approval of your resource requests
- Work on tasks assigned to you for approving other
resource requests
- Perform requests and approvals as a proxy or delegate
for someone else
- Assign someone else to be your proxy or delegate
(if you are authorized)
- Manage all of these request and approval features
for your team (if you are authorized)
NOTE:Requests and approvals require the Provisioning Module for
Identity Manager.
1.1.3 Typical uses
Here are some examples of how people typically use the Identity
Manager user interface within an organization.
Working with identity self-service
- Ella (an end-user) recovers her forgotten
password through the identity self-service features when
logging in.
- Erik (an end-user) performs a search for
all employees at his location who speak German.
- Eduardo (an end-user) browses the organization
chart, finds Ella, and clicks the e-mail icon to send
a message to her.
Working with requests and approvals
- Ernie (an end-user) browses a list
of resources available to him, and requests
access to the Siebel system.
- Amy (an approver) receives notification of
an approval request via e-mail (which contains an URL). She clicks
the link, is presented with an approval form,
and approves it.
- Ernie checks on the status of
his previous request for Siebel access (which has now gone to a second
person for approval). He sees that it is still in progress.
- Amy is going on vacation, so she indicates that
she is temporarily unavailable; no new approval
tasks will be assigned to her.
- Amy opens her approval task list, sees that there
are too many for her to respond to in a timely manner, and so reassigns several
to co-workers.
- Pat (an administrative assistant, acting as a proxy user
for Amy) opens Amy’s task list and performs an approval
task for her.
- Max (a manager) views the task lists of
people in his department. He knows that Amy is on vacation,
so he reassigns tasks to others in his department.
- Max initiates a request for
a database account for someone in his department who reports directly
to him.
- Max assigns Dan to be an authorized delegate for
Amy.
- Dan (now a delegated approver) receives Amy’s
tasks when she is unavailable.
- Max engages an unpaid intern, who should not be
entered into the HR system. The system administrator creates
the user record for this intern and requests that he
be given access to Notes, Active Directory, and Oracle.