User Provisioning Project - ITLC Middleware Project

Note: This is the User Provisioning wiki's old home page. It has been archived. Please refer to the wiki's current home page.

ITLC Middleware Project Description:

UC ITLC is sponsoring a common UC Middleware to provide an architecture/approach that enables UC to more optimally leverage system wide information technology resources while still addressing campus specific operational differences and cultures.

Common Middleware provides a common tool set to facilitate sharing applications and services between campuses, promotes interoperability, creates opportunities for re-use, and provides opportunities for canpuses to act as ASPs, thus lowers costs in time, effort and resources both centrally and locally.

The goals specific to this project are:  A Pilot/Proof of concept operationalization of common UC Middleware and a White Paper with recommendation for common UC Middleware standards going forward.

User Provisioning has been selected as the proof of concept project for the ITLC Middleware Project.

User Provisioning Proof of Concept Project Overview and Goals:

UCTrust has provided a common infrastructure for identifying users to multi-campus applications, including information that can be used to make authorization decisions. The Shibboleth technology used by UCTrust provides that information at the start of an online session. However, we have learned that many applications need to incorporate contextual information about their users before those users' first sessions.

For example, the LMS employee training system must be able to send email to various categories of employees to inform them that they are due for legally-mandated training (such as sexual harassment prevention training for supervisors). While UCOP has built software to upload basic employee information to the LMS, each campus is required to create a process to upload basic information about non-employees who must (or can) take training, as well as complementary information not maintained by UCOP. A similar need exists for Connexxus and UC Ready, and would have been needed for At Your Service Online if the identity information had not already been in place within the payroll system.

The goal of the proposed project is to leverage the policies and agreements already established for UCTrust to develop a second software infrastructure that supports the exchange of identity information before, and independently of, the establishment of a user session. While it is unlikely that all campus-level implementation in support of multi-campus applications can be eliminated, not addressing this issue will mean that future applications will continue to require 10-12 separate development efforts to provision users.

The development of detailed specifications should be a collaborative effort of the ITAG and the UCTrust Work Group so as to maximally leverage the perspectives of both architecture and implementation experience perspectives (although there is considerable overlap in the membership in any case).

User Provisioning Proof of Concept Key Benefits and Deliverables:

The key benefit of a common framework is more rapid deployment and greater agility in launching multi-campus applications, with lower costs in time, effort, and resources both centrally and at the campus level.

The key deliverable is the common framework/infrastructure, probably based on a service bus, that can facilitate these exchanges of identity information. This includes a standard interface specification to be used by applications that require such identity information.

User Provisioning Proof of Concept Timeline:

The target for completion of this work is the end of calendar year 2011. This will, however, require work by each of the campuses, so the first milestone should be a checkpoint to giving the ITLC a go / no-go decision on whether to proceed to subsequent milestones. The first milestone, to be complete by the end of 2010, should deliver:

User Provisioning Proof of Concept Key Stakeholders:

User Provisioning Proof of Concept Advisory Groups and Their Role:

Project Sponsor: Chuck Rowley, Mary Doyle, Pete Siegel

Project Manager: Dede Bruno

Participants:

Milestones:

Status as of 02/03/11:

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 Upcoming Milestones/ Next Steps Due Before Next Report:

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