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 Products
DTM
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How many licenses must I purchase?
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DTM is licensed by the managed account
which is any entry account in the GAL that is updated or synchronized
by DTM. |
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| Q: |
How is the Maintenance Agreement Program licensed?
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The Maintenance
Agreement Program is available for all product purchases regardless
of size or amount. It is 20% of MSRP before any discount. Upgrades are free during the Maintenance Agreements coverage
period, which is one year. Maintenance Agreements are renewable annually. |
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| Q: |
What type of licensing do you offer?
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We do all of our licensing electronically through our Activation Code Program (ACP). Once your payment has been processed, you are emailed an activation code. Once you activate that code, you are sent a license key and number for the product(s) that you purchased.
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| Q: |
Will DTM transform data and if so, can you provide an example?
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Yes, DTM will transform data. Let's say you have several sources of Human Resources (HR) information and you want to get it in order before synchronizing it into your pristine network-wide Active Directory data. In particular, names might need to be reformatted, department codes translated, dates adjusted, etc. DTM does such transformations seamlessly, in one fell swoop, as part of the process of transferring the data from the HR database to Active Directory. |
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Scripting is programming, with all the power and flexibility that it implies but within the safe confines of a scripting "sandbox." Applications that support built-in scripting "smarts" are open-ended and adaptable to an extent unimaginable with ordinary, unscriptable applications, no matter how many configuration settings they provide. That's why Microsoft, for example, builds scripting support into all their Office applications. Power users insist on scriptable applications. |
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| Q: |
When is scripting valuable?
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Scripting is valuable whenever
you need to go "outside the box" to tailor the application to your
needs. In the realm of data transformation, there's really no limit
to what you might want to do. Combining data from multiple fields,
parsing compound values, translating codes from one code-set to another,
making on-the-fly decisions based on the data being transferred -
all these cases call for scripting. |
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| Q: |
If I didn't use DTM's scripting, what would I have to do instead?
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Without scripting, you might be faced with some awkward choices. If you are extracting data from a relational database, you might be able to perform the necessary data transformations within the database - using a stored procedure or a SQL-based view - before performing the transfer. You might need to chain together several processes: a transformation process followed by a transfer process, or vice versa. As a last resort, you might need to give the job a manual "assist" at the end to patch up data that doesn't quite conform to the destination's format.
All these options run counter to the design philosophy behind DTM: set up a single job that performs both the transfer and the transformations, and let DTM do the rest - either on demand or on a schedule. In many situations, scripting is the key ingredient that makes this possible.
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| Q: |
Our company is currently using View500 for storing directory information.
Do you have a product that will support exporting information from View500 to Active Directory?
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Yes, DTM supports exporting information from View500 into Exchange 5.5 and Active Directory. |
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| Q: |
When peforming a sync from Active Directory to Excel the DTM job fails with "Cannot find Column" error, which is documented in the log file. Is there a workaround or solution available to resolve this issue?
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When DTM performs a lookup, DTM attempts
to put the data string (e.g. a particular SAM account name) in quotes,
which causes the *data* to be interpreted as a column name. Also,
you may experience the error whenever Microsoft Excel detects the
key field is numeric, but the DTM job requires it to be text. For
information on how to workaround the issue, please refer to the Imanami
Knowledge Base article located at the following link: http://www.imanami.com/support/viewer.aspx?ID=10051
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For the sake of consistency and ease of use, we'd like to revamp the display names associated with our Active Directory user objects. The current display names are all over the map! How can we apply a uniform formatting rule, such as: Last Name [comma] [space] First Name [space] Middle Initial [period] within AD?
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DTM can revamp all your display names in one "fell swoop" and can periodically ensure that they remain in a consistent format by updating them weekly, daily, or as often as needed. Moreover, DTM allows you to implement virtually any display name format you can imagine by writing a "transform" script.
The DTM wizard provides a built-in Script Editor and an integrated Script Tester. These make it possible to write scripts in Visual Basic.Net, Microsoft's incarnation of the ever-popular Visual Basic language. Scripting extends DTM's flexible field mapping feature, which enables you to determine, field-by-field, how your destination data is to be derived from your source data.
For your purpose, it is sufficient to set up a job whose source and destination are one-in-the-same: Active Directory. The source data consists of three fields: Last Name ("sn" in LDAP-speak), First Name (aka, "givenName") and Middle Name (aka, "middleName"). The destination data is simply one field: Display Name. The script will obtain the values found in the source fields and compose a value for the destination field.
You configure a new DTM job using the DTM wizard. Once you designate Active Directory as both the source and destination, you are given a list of the available destination fields. This is where you select "Display Name." You must also select "Common Name (CN)" - this is necessary to uniquely identify the object whose Display Name you are modifying. You are then presented with the Field Mapping table, and here you should "Common Name" as the key field and, for the "Display Name" field, click on the "." button. This presents you with the Transform dialog, and here you can select the option to "Write a Visual Basic.Net script to assign a value programmatically." Click on the "Edit Script" button to launch the Script Editor.
Here is what your script might look like:
Dim LastName = DTM.Source("sn")
Dim FirstName = DTM.Source("givenName")
Dim MiddleName = DTM.Source("middleName")
Dim FullName = LastName
If Len(FirstName) > 0 Or Len(MiddleName) > 0 Then
FullName = FullName & ", "
End If
FullName = FullName & FirstName
If Len(FirstName) > 0 And Len(MiddleName) > 0 Then
FullName = FullName & " "
End If
If Len(MiddleName) > 0 Then
FullName = FullName & Left(MiddleName, 1) & "."
End If
DTM.Result = FullName
This script goes to some trouble to ensure that, even if parts of the name are missing (e.g., no middle name), the end result will be "nicely" formatted without unnecessary punctuation.
Before exiting the Script Editor, you will be prompted to test the script by means of a "Script Tester" dialog - just click the check mark icon. The Tester ensures that the script compiles without error, and gives you an opportunity to try out different input values (in this case, different first, middle and last names) and validate the results.
The final step of the wizard is to schedule the job to run periodically - or, if you wish, simply run the job upon demand.
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We have a large Exchange 5.5 network structure within our organization that is difficult to maintain on a daily basis.
We are also preparing to migrate from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 in the near future.
Do you provide any tools that will not only ease our migration, but help us to keep our directory up to date?
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Yes, we do provide tools that will help your transition run smoothly.
DTM (Directory Transformation Manager) is a tool that can be used to help the migration process by recreating
objects from your existing Exchange 5.5 directory to your new Exchange 2003 directory.
Also, WebDir is another useful tool that will help to maintain your directory by allowing the users
to update their own directory information, which will help free up administrative time and alleviate administrative task. |
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We're a corporation with 1,000+ employees, and we rely on manual methods to periodically update Active Directory to reflect the current HR data. Our HR data is maintained in a SQL Server 2000 database. We organize our users within Active Directory by department. There's one organizational unit per department, and each department's organizational unit contains all users who work under that department. Performing this work, manually, is time consuming and inaccurate. Does Imanami have a solution for us?
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Yes! Directory Transformation Manager (DTM) will automate the synchronization of those directories. In fact DTM will even provide built-in support for scripting. DTM imports data into Active Directory from SQL Server 2000 (as well as other sources). DTM provides a flexible way to map fields to attributes, which enables you to write scripts that dynamically route data to different containers within Active Directory.
Here's the general approach:
1. Create a View within your HR database that represents
all that data you wish to import
into Active Directory (or you can use an existing Table if it already
contains all the desired data),
2. Create a DTM job that connects to this View or Table and maps the relevant fields to the appropriate Active Directory User attributes - applying what we call "transforms" to modify & reformat the field data as needed. The job will either update existing Users in Active Directory or create new Users if it discovers that they do not yet exist. This last contingency - creating new Users - calls for a script. We'll describe that in a moment.
3. Set up the job to run automatically on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis. This setting, like all job settings, is configurable through the Job Wizard.
DTM provides an integrated script editor and script tester in the Job Wizard. It allows you to create scripts that either 1) transform field data ("transform" scripts) or 2) determine the destination container ("container" scripts). The scripting language supported is Visual Basic.Net, Microsoft's incarnation of the ever-popular Visual Basic language.
In this case, whenever the job creates a new User object, it must decide on a container for the object based on the User's department, so a container script is required. This means, that it must be possible to "glean" the department from the source data for the user. Let's say, that the source data includes a department code: "SA" for Sales, "EN" for Engineering, and "AD" for Administration, etc. Here's what the script might look like:
Select Case DTM.Source("DeptCode")
Case "SA"
DTM.Result = "CN=Sales,CN=Users,DC=dc2000,DC=imanami,DC=biz"
Case "EN"
DTM.Result =
"CN=Engineering,CN=Users,DC=dc2000,DC=imanami,DC=biz"
Case "AD"
DTM.Result = "CN=Administration,CN=Users,DC=dc2000,DC=imanami,DC=biz"
Case Else
DTM.Result = "CN=Users,DC=dc2000,DC=imanami,DC=biz"
End Select
Details: To create the script, use the Script Editor, which appears when you click the "Edit Script" button on the "Create Object" page of the Wizard. Before exiting the Script Editor, you will be prompted to test the script by means of a "Script Tester" dialog - just click the check mark icon. The Tester ensures that the script compiles without error, and gives you an opportunity to try out different input values (in this case, different department codes) and validate the results.
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| Q: |
Do you offer discounts for special institutions?
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Yes, we have great educational and
governmental discounts. Please contact sales@imanami.com
or fill out a quote form for pricing. |
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| Q: |
Can I get a hard copy of the product?
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Yes, you can order a Media Kit with
your purchase of Imanami Directory Transformation Manager. A Media
Kit costs $29 and includes both a CD and a hard copy of the documentation.
Media kits should be requested at time of purchase. |
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Where can I get more technical information on DTM?
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