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Customizable CSV file (CSV Connector type)

Introduction

Description

The CSV Connector provides a way to load authoritative data from fixed record size files.

Managed System

This connector has been performed to charge authoritative data from files with CSV format or other format in other extension files.

For more information to check if your system may be synchronized with this connector you do not hesitate to contact us through our Contact form

Prerequisites

The file must be placed in the same Synchronization Server host.

The file must has the correct permissions to be readed for the Synchronization Server.

Download and Install

This addon is located in the Connectors section and its name is Flat file plugin.

For download and install the addon you could review our generic documentation about this process: Addons installation

Agent Configuration

This connector could only be used as an identity source, no output file could be generated yet.

Usually, this connector is used the first time to charge manually the user information of the identities from the HR applications o database.

As example, this is the flow to shows how the "Customizable fixed-columns file v2.0" works.

CSV Connector.png

Basic

Generic parameters

After the installation of the addon, you may create and configure agent instances.

This addon has 5 available types:

  • Customizable fixed-columns file v2.0: it is used to charge a table where each column has a fixed number of characters.
  • Customizable CSV file: it is used to charge a standard CSV file (comma-separated values), where all the columns are separated by a comma.
  • CSV file test agent.
  • Dummy password agent.
  • Test.

To configure this CSV plugin, you could select one of the previous agent in the attribute "Type" of the generic parameters section in the agents page configuration.

For more information about how you may configure the generic parameters of the agent, see the following link: Agents configuration

Custom parameters

The main parameters for this connectors are:

Customizable fixed-columns file v2.0
Parameter
Description
Enable debug Two options: [ Yes / No ]. When it is enabled more log traces are printed in the Synchronization Server log
Character set (utf-8)
 Charset used to load files. Despite it in uncommon, multi-byte character sets, as UTF-8, are allowed. Nevertheless, single byte character sets as ISO-8859-1 are recommended
Customizable CSV file
Parameter
Description
Enable debug Two options: [ Yes / No ]. When it is enabled more log traces are printed in the Synchronization Server log
CSV file test agent
Parameter
Description
User's file Directory where the CSV file is placed
Dummy password agent
Parameter
Description
Dummy Password
 Dummy Password
Test
Parameter
Description
CSV file
 Path of the CSV file

Attribute mapping

Only the "Customizable fixed-columns file v2.0" and the "Customizable CSV file" agents have this functionality implemented.

Properties

Customizable fixed-columns file v2.0

This agent requires two properties:

Property
Description
file Path where the file is placed in the directory system
recordSize

Total number of characters of the rows.

This property must have a number value.

The file will be splitted into records of this size in bytes. Mind the record size must include any line terminator character as "carriage return" or "line feed".

And after that you must specify the number of rows of every row as follow:

Property
Description
N-M

Where N is the position of the first character and M the position of the last character, both included.

Column numbers start with 1 (not 0).

And for example, if the property is defined as "1-10" with the value "NAME", Soffid will extract characters from columns 1 to 10 (both inclusive) into a field named NAME in Soffid.

For example for this file:

abernal   Antonio        Bernal         world      YES
jwayne2   John           Wayne          world      YES

These are its properties:

CSV Connector - properties.png

Customizable CSV file

This agent only needs the next properties:

Property
Description

file

Mandatory: Path where the file is placed in the directory system

key

Mandatory: The field to be used as key 

Attributes

Customizable fixed-columns file v2.0

The mapping in only available for USER object.

Now we could map the system attribute defined as property values agains Soffid attributes, for example:

System attribute
Soffid attribute

USER

userName

FIRSTNAME

firstName

LASTNAME

lastName

GROUPNAME

primaryGroup

ACTIVE.equals("YES")

active

For example:

CSV Connector - attributes.png

For more information about how you may configure attribute mapping, see the following link: Soffid Attribute Mapping Reference

Customizable CSV file

The mapping in only available for USER object.

The first row of the file must include the name of the attribute.

USER,FIRSTNAME,LASTNAME,GROUPNAME,ACTIVE
abernal,Antonio,Bernal,world,YES
jwayne2,John,Wayne, world,YES

Now we could map the system attribute (file) with the Soffid attributes, for example:

System attribute
Soffid attribute

USER

userName

FIRSTNAME

firstName

LASTNAME

lastName

GROUPNAME

primaryGroup

ACTIVE.equals("YES")

active

Load Triggers

&&TODO&&Pending to be documented.

Account metada

&&TODO&&Pending to be documented.

Operational

Monitoring

After the agent configuration you could check in the monitoring page if the service is running in the Synchronization Server, please go to: 

  • Start Menu > Administration > Monitoring and reporting > Syscserver monitoring

Tasks

Authotitative

If you are checked "Authorized identity source", an automatic task to load identities from the managed system to Soffid is available, please go to 

  • Start Menu > Processes and Tasks > Manage automatic tasks &&TODO&& ¿Qué opcion?

And you will something like "Import authoritative data from <AGENT_NAME>".

Reconcile

If your are configured the "Attribute Mapping" tab with some of our objects: "user, account, role, group or grant", an automatic task to synchronize these objects from the managed system to Soffid is available, please go to:

  • Start Menu > Processes and Tasks > Manage automatic tasks &&TODO&&¿Qué opcion?

And you will something like "Reconcile all accounts from <AGENT_NAME>".

Synchronization

About the synchronization of the objects, there are two possible options:

  • If you are checked the generic attribute "Read Only" in the "Basics" tab, only the changes in the managed systems will be updated in Soffid. We recommend this options until the global configuration of Soffid will be tested.
  • If you are not checked the generic attribute "Read Only" in the "Basics" tab, all the changes in Soffid or the managed system will be updated in the other. Note that this synchronization must be configured in the "Attribute mapping" tab correctly.

For more information about how you may configure the generic parameters of the agent, see the following link: Agents configuration

 

Customizable CSV file (CSV Connector type)

Description

The CSV connector type allows users to load a collection of data stored into a plain CSV file.

In the following page, the process to complete the CSV connector setup will be explained.

To begin with,  address to the quick start section. 

Quick start

The core of Customizable CSV file connector is located under the 'Attribute Mapping'  tab.

There are two important sections:

Property

File information related configuration.

Property
Description
file Mandatory: Path where the file is placed in the directory system
key Mandatory: The field to be used as key 

 System attribute

Mapping between CSV fields and Soffid objects.

CSV Connector - customizable CSV file.png

Taking a look to the configuration used, we can see that:

  • System objects is the entity to load (user, account, group, role).
  • System attributes fields match the columns defined into the 'file.csv'.

To demonstrate Soffid flexibility in terms of agent customization, notice that:

USERNAME, NAME, LASTNAME fields, correspond to default fields from User object.

NDI is a custom field defined into the User object.

"I" is a 'char' literal that indicates the UserType.

  • Soffid attributes match Soffid specification model object.

Example

&&TODO&&¿De donde se descarga los ficheros?

Type
File
data (file used in this configuration guide)

file.csv
attribute-mapping (file used in this configuration guide)

csv-agent-config.xml 

Useful information

System objects
User
Account
Group
Role

 

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