Active Roles 7.2.1 - Administrator Guide

Entitlement profile configuration

In Active Roles, entitlement profile specifiers provide the ability to store the definition of entitlement to a particular resource in a single object. entitlement profile specifiers determine the contents of the entitlement profile.

When building the entitlement profile of a given user, Active Roles uses the entitlement profile specifiers to determine what resources the user is entitled to, and what information about each resource is to be shown in the entitlement profile.

Active Roles comes with a collection of pre-defined specifiers, and allows administrators to create additional specifiers or change existing specifiers. You can use the following instructions to create or change entitlement profile specifiers:

• Creating entitlement profile specifiers
• Changing entitlement profile specifiers

For a list of pre-defined specifiers, see Pre-defined specifiers.

Creating entitlement profile specifiers

Active Roles stores entitlement profile specifiers in the Entitlement Profile Specifiers container. You can access that container by expanding the Configuration/Server Configuration branch in the Active Roles console tree.

To create an entitlement profile specifier

1. In the console tree, under Configuration/Server Configuration/Entitlement Profile Specifiers, right-click the container in which you want to create a new specifier, and select New | Entitlement Profile Specifier.

   For example, if you want to create a new specifier in the root container, right-click Entitlement Profile Specifiers.

2. In the New Object - Entitlement Profile Specifier wizard, type a name and, optionally, a description for the new specifier.

   The name and description are used to identify the specifier object in the Active Roles console.

3. Click Next.
4. Choose the desired type of entitlement:
   • Select the User attributes option if the fact that a given user is entitled to the resource stems from certain attribute settings of the user’s account in Active Directory. For example, this is the type of entitlement to an Exchange mailbox or to a home folder.
   • Select the Group membership option if the fact that a given user is entitled to the resource stems from membership of the user in a certain security group.
   • Select the Manager or owner role assignment option if entitlement of a given user to the resource means that the user is designated as the manager (primary owner) or a secondary owner of a certain object.
5. Click Next.
6. Set up the Entitlement rules list.

   In this step, you define the criteria that are used to determine whether a given user is entitled to the resource. The entitlement rules take the form of conditions that the entitlement target object must meet in order for the user to be regarded as entitled to the resource, and thus for information about the resource to appear in the entitlement profile of that user.

   Active Roles evaluates the entitlement rules against the entitlement target object when building a user’s entitlement profile. Depending on the entitlement type, the entitlement target object is:

• In case of the User attributes entitlement type, the user account of the user whose entitlement profile is being built. (This entitlement type is referred to as personal resource entitlement.)
• In case of the Group membership entitlement type, any single group to which the user belongs, whether directly or because of group nesting. (This entitlement type is referred to as shared resource entitlement.)

3. You can define entitlement rules based on object properties, such as whether the object has certain attributes set or whether the object is a security group. The conditions take the form of LDAP filter based search criteria. With the “Include” rule type, the user is regarded as entitled to the resource if the entitlement target object meets the search criteria. With the “Exclude” rule type, the user is regarded as not entitled to the resource if the entitlement target object meets the search criteria.
4. In addition to filter-based rules, you can configure rules on a per-object basis, so as to include or exclude individual objects from entitlement assignment explicitly. If Active Roles encounters a rule to include the entitlement target object, it considers the user as entitled to the resource. If Active Roles encounters a rule to exclude the entitlement target object, then it considers the user as not entitled to the resource.
5. Active Roles evaluates the entitlement rules in the following order:
   1. Explicit exclusion
   2. Explicit inclusion
   3. Filter-based exclusion
   4. Filter-based inclusion

   Once the entitlement target object matches a rule of a particular type, the rule types that stand lower in this list are not applied. This means that exclusion rules take precedence over inclusion rules and explicit selection of objects takes precedence over filter-based rules.

   Initially, no entitlement rules are configured, which is treated as an inclusion-type condition that evaluates to TRUE for any object. As a result, entitlement to the resource is established regardless of the properties of the entitlement target object. You can add entitlement rules in order to categorize entitlements based on properties of entitlement target objects.

   To add an entitlement rule, click Include or Exclude depending on the rule type you want, and then use the Configure Entitlement Rule dialog box to specify your search criteria. You can specify search criteria the same way you do when using the Find dialog box. Then, do one of the following:

• To add a rule based on the search criteria you specified, click Add Rule.
• To select specific objects, click Find Now, select check boxes in the list of search results, and then click Add Selection.

7. Click Next.
8. View or change the icon that is used to distinguish the type of the resource in the entitlement profile:
   • View the icon in the area next to the Change button.
   • To choose a different icon, click Change and then select the desired image file.
   • To revert to the default icon, click Use Default Icon.
9. Type the name of the resource type to be displayed in the entitlement profile.
10. Click Select to choose the attribute of the entitlement target object whose value will be used to name the resource in the entitlement profile.

    The resource type icon, display name, and naming attribute are used to identify the resource in the entitlement profile. If the evaluation of the entitlement rules for a given user indicates that the user is entitled to the resource, then information about the resource appears as a separate section in the entitlement profile of that user. The heading of the section includes the resource type icon, the display name of the resource type, and the value of the naming attribute retrieved from the entitlement target object.

11. Click Next.
12. Set up the list of the resource-related attributes that will be displayed in the entitlement profile:
    • Use the Add or Remove button to add or remove attributes from the list.
    • Click Add Separator to divide the attribute list into sections in the entitlement profile.
    • Use the Up and Down buttons to arrange the attribute list order.

    The attributes held in the list will be displayed in the entitlement profile, beneath the heading of the section that provides information about the resource. For each of the listed attributes, the section displays the name and the value of the attribute retrieved from the entitlement target object.

13. Click Next, and then click Finish.

Changing entitlement profile specifiers

You can change an existing entitlement profile specifier by changing the specifier’s name and description, entitlement type and rules, resource display settings, and resource attributes list. The entitlement profile specifier objects are located under Configuration/Server Configuration/Entitlement Profile Specifiers in the Active Roles console.

The following table summarizes the changes you can make to an existing entitlement profile specifier object, assuming that you have found the object in the Active Roles console. You can also disable or delete a specifier using the Disable or Delete command on the Action menu. Active Roles disregards the disabled specifiers when building the entitlement profile. A disabled specifier can be re-enabled by using the Enable command that appears on the Action menu for disabled specifiers.

Pre-defined specifiers

Active Roles comes with a collection of pre-defined specifiers that determine the default resource profile configuration. The pre-defined specifiers are located in the Configuration/Server Configuration/Entitlement Profile Specifiers/Builtin container, and can be administered using the Active Roles console. You can make changes to a pre-defined specifier (see Changing entitlement profile specifiers) or you can apply the Disable command for the specifier to have no effect. Note that pre-defined specifiers cannot be deleted.

The pre-defined specifiers have a lower priority than customer-created specifiers. This means the entitlement rules of customer-created specifiers are evaluated first, so that if a given entitlement target object matches the entitlement rules of both a pre-defined specifier and a customer-created specifier, the latter specifier is applied. The priority of specifiers is governed by the edsaPriority attribute setting (see About entitlement profile build process).

The following table provides information about the pre-defined specifiers. For each specifier, the table lists the specifier’s name, description, entitlement type and rules, and resource display settings.