Identity Director
Oxford Computer Group Austria has developed a drop-in replacement solution for the MIM Portal. Named ‘Identity Director’, the solution encompasses a web service and a modern, user-friendly UI, which emulates all the features of the MIM portal, while using the same MIM resources for configuration, but without requiring SharePoint.
Our MIM implementation was the only reason remaining to support SharePoint on-premises – all our other SharePoint requirements are in M365. Oxford Computer Group provided a replacement MIM portal, which disposed of the SharePoint requirement, removing a significant support burden. We would recommend this to anyone using the MIM Portal!
Because the “standard” MIM objects are used, Identity Director replaces the MIM portal with no need for any migration or modification of the MIM data or configuration (while also offering many enhanced features) and has been in use by more than 20 customers for several years.
Architecturally, the solution looks like this:
Key Features
The key features of the UI are:
- Easy to use modern UI
- Easy search, including data export, with an intuitive filter builder
- Easy data entry, with Date, fixed prefix, calculated values based on
- Use of wizards for defined tasks, including multiple RCDCs per object type
Fully featured MIM without SharePoint
Particularly in the light of the recent SharePoint drama, with an emergency patch being issued to fix a critical flaw, it is important to note that the Identity Director solution does not use SharePoint at all. In addition to all objects of interest (users, groups, projects, companies, roles…) Identity Directors makes use of all your existing workflows (including MIMWAL activities), Management Policy Rules and Synchronization Rules, as well as layout configuration from Resource Control Display Configurations (RCDCs).
Several base MIM features have been significantly enhanced, including the change timeline, modern form controls, multiple RCDCs per object type, wizard or use case, easy deployment of configuration changes between systems, and many others.
UI Examples
User Details
The user is selected in the left pane, and the right pane opens, using (in this case) the User Edit RCDC for its layout. Note the modern controls (such as the calendar shown here).
User History
In this screen, the requests affecting the selected resource are shown in date order, delivering a history view (a significant improvement over the clumsy approach required in the MIM Portal). In addition, the content and result of the request are available in the view, without opening new windows, making troubleshooting faster and easier.
Group Details
Group handling is, naturally, also supported.
When changes are made to a manual group membership, the Show Changes switch allows the display of all member adds and removes in a single list, so that the overall changes are easy to understand:
Filter-based groups are supported, with a friendly and powerful filter UI:
In the filter above, the ‘negate’ switch is enabled (shown in red), allowing easy ‘NOT’ functionality.
Note the capability to define the attributes included in the results list, and to export the filter results directly to a CSV file.
Workflow Activity Configuration
The following screenshots show the configuration of a MIMWAL Update Resources activity. The first shows the query definition:
The second screenshot shows the update logic:
Policy Configuration
MPRs can be configured. Note that the number in the fourth column shows how many action types are selected, getting a better overview from this screen.
Synchronization Rules
Sync Rules are fully configurable, with the notable improvement over the MIM Portal that the source and target details are visible in the same list – no need to click around to see the whole configuration.
Licensing
Identity Director is licensed on a per-month, per-user basis. The costs vary depending on the system, but are often lower than the equivalent SharePoint licensing costs. In addition, Oxford Computer Group customers with a support contract will often qualify for special rates.
Summary
Identity Director provides a quick and powerful, SharePoint-free solution for MIM users, with a number of functional and quality-of-life improvements over the MIM Portal.