The Requests & Approvals tab in the Identity Manager user application includes a group of actions called My Settings. The My Settings actions give you the ability to act as a proxy for another user. In addition, they allow you to view your proxy and delegate assignments. If you are an Organizational Manager or User Application Administrator, you can also define proxy and delegate assignments.
A delegate is a user authorized to perform work for another user. A delegate assignment applies to a particular type of resource request.
A proxy is a user authorized to perform any and all work (and also define provisioning settings) for one or more users, groups, or containers. Unlike delegate assignments, proxy assignments are independent of resource requests, and therefore apply to all work and settings actions.
Proxy and delegate assignments have time periods Both proxy and delegate assignments are associated with time periods. The time period for a proxy or delegate assignment can be as short or as long as you need it to be. The time period can also have no expiration date.
Proxy and delegate actions are logged If logging is enabled, any actions taken by a proxy or delegate are logged along with actions taken by other users. When an action is taken by a proxy or delegate, the log message clearly indicates that the action was performed by a proxy or delegate for another user. In addition, each time a new proxy or delegate assignment is defined, this event is logged as well.
Only proxies receive e-mail notifications If the User Application Administrator configures a provisioning request to generate e-mail notifications, proxies (as well as addressees) are notified by e-mail when a task has been assigned to them. Delegates are not included in e-mail notifications.
This section describes a few business scenarios where proxies and delegates might be used.
Suppose you are a manager who is responsible for approving (or denying) a large number of workflow task on a daily basis. In addition, you are also responsible for editing provisioning settings for a large number of users in your organization. In this situation, you might want to assign a proxy so that some of your work can be off-loaded to a trusted member of your team.
Suppose you are a manager who is responsible for approving or denying requests for ten different types of provisioned resources. All ten request types need regular attention, but you would rather have another individual in your organization attend to six of them. In this case, you could define a delegate for these six resource request types. If necessary, you could restrict this delegate relationship to a period of hours, day, or weeks only. Alternatively, you could specify no expiration for the delegate relationship, thereby establishing this relationship as a more permanent arrangement.