Creating Aliases in Luminis
We are brand new to Luminis and have run into an issue, and I am hoping someone with more experience will be able to advise us on how to handle this situation. Along with Luminis we are integrating with D2L. Before we installed Luminis onto our production server it was decided that we would use the spriden_id as our login to Luminis. Now that we have begun our pilot training, a few users have decided that they do not like the fact that their spriden_id shows up in the from part of the email address in D2L. One of our consultants has suggested that we create aliases (the spriden_id would be the alias) for our users so that the spriden_id could be used for the Luminis login, but the third party id would be passed to D2L rather than the spriden_id which would resolve the email issue. This sounds like a viable plan, but we are not sure how we would go about populating the LoginAlias after the initial import of the LoginAlias. We would greatly appreciate any help that anyone could provide.
Thank you,
Kim Lowd
South Florida Community College
Creating Aliases in Luminis
Its been awhile since I looked at this, but we have a plan in place for the alumni. Our student use an S# as their login, however alumni would use a 919#. We have a process that renames their account, and then adds their old username as an alias in case they ever came back to school so we wouldn't have to do it again. I don't think we ever implimented it due to issues with timing, but testing it out everything seemed to work as it should. We were just using xml import files to make all the changes. We never tested it against an external system, since once they became alumni, then they only had access to luminis and no other systems.
Creating Aliases in Luminis
Did you set this up in your testing to run automatically?
Creating Aliases in Luminis
No, this wasn't automatic, we don't have events turned on between luminis and banner, so we were doing everything with xml imports through cptool.
Creating Aliases in Luminis
What do you use for your xml? Did you create your own or use what is provided by Sungard?
Thank you,
Kim
Creating Aliases in Luminis
I can't find our exact procedure, but this is what it is doing:
cptool set user OLDUSERNAME UserName=NEWUSERNAME
cptool set user NEWUSERNAME LoginAlias=OLDUSERNAME
Creating Aliases in Luminis
Thank you.
We have been thinking about doing something similiar.
Did you have to do anything to get this to work?
I am trying to run these commands and am getting:
ERROR: No such property, or property cannot be set: UserName
no...but
No we did not have to do anything to get this to work. This is the command that we are using: cptool set user pxxxxx LoginAlias=X0000000, to set aliaes.
cptool and alias
I found the process we are running.
cptool set user USERNAME1OLD UserName=USERNAME2NEW
cptool set user USERNAME2NEW LoginAlias=USERNAME1OLD
cptool set user USERNAME2NEW EmailID=USERNAME2NEW@mail.edu
We have to reset the email while we're doing it. You can run this on the command line, or in a file which we are doing.
cptool, not xml for alias
Sorry, I think the confusion was that I was calling it an xml import, which really it is a cptool process file.
Sorry for the confusion.
loginalias
I don't know of a way to automatically update the LoginAlias from banner via events (someone else might), but you could update via scheduled scripts in 3 ways.
Regardless of which way you choose, you'd need to get an extract from Banner of new users and loop over that, running however often you feel you need accounts updated.
1. cptool set user LoginAlias=
or
2. Have banner produce an xml extract and do cptool import ims
or
3. Ldapmodify and update the login alias via ldap commands.
The Luminis IV Admin Guide has a section describing 1 and 2 in more detail called "CREATING LOGIN ALIASES".
loginalias
I have reviewed the Admin guide which is very helpful for a first time import, but after the first import is where we get lost. Is there documentation somwhere on how to create the xml from Banner?
Thank you,
Kim
icgorldi
I'm not a banner person, but..
You'll want to look up documentation on the icgorldi process in banner. I believe that is the main way that people produce the Luminis compatible xml files for importing courses, people, instructors, etc...
I am not sure what level of control the icgorldi process has to control what data is produced though. It might not be able to, for instance, only select new students. Usually for more specific sets of data like that, I ask our Banner people to schedule a sql/plsql query that writes out to file, and then it is scp'd to my server.
But if you don't have millions of users, and you run the icgorldi process at night, it might not be a problem to reimport more than you need and some periodic basis.
icgorldi
Thank you for your suggestions.
I'm a Banner person thrown into a Luminis world. : )
We run ICGORLDI, but it does not pull in the loginalias, so that is an issue in regards to the xml creation, especially because I do not have any training in those regards.
I know that I would be able to pull in the new users and have it run through a nightly process in Banner, but getting the loginalias out of Banner and into Luminis after the initial load in the frustrating issue.
It would be *nice* to have the loginalias populate whenever a new user is created using the LDIPERSON event.
Defect #: 1-394QK0
Defect #: 1-394QK0
"When an existing person record who has been assigned a LoginAlias is updated via LDI event or extract processing, the LoginAlias for that person is removed."
Sounds like a double whammy then. Even if you made a sql query to write out the login aliases to file, and made a bash/php/perl script on the Luminis server to update the user's ldap entries, banner events would wipe out the changes.
Defect #: 1-394QK0
Thank you again for your response.
Our consultant provided us with the information stating that defect has been resolved and in our initial testing, if we set the parameters correctly it looks promising. It appears as though we are walking a path that others have not walked. : )
Update LoginAlias in Luminis via a Perl Script
We have modified ICGORLDI to create a LoginAlias attribute of the Spriden_ID. This works for the initial load but new users into Luminis which are created using the LDIPERSON event do not have this LoginAlias attribute passed. We have written a PERL script that gets run daily on the Luminis Server that adds the LoginAlias to those accounts that do not have it. I'll be glad to provide the PERL code if that is the route that you might be interested in taking.
Perl Script
I would love to check out your PERL code and see if that route would be feasible for us.
Thank you,
Kim
Contact Info
Realized that there is no email info on how to contact someone from this web site. At least I dont know how to do it. If you want to, send me an email at Roman.Maksymiw@cayuga-cc.edu ( that is a dash between the cayuga and cc ). I'll be glad to send you the code.