Identity Management at Waterloo Isaac Morland
What is Identity? What am I actually talking about, anyway?
What Makes a Good Identifier? Unique Short Permanent
An Example Student schedule with instructor contact information and office hours Authenticate — userid Look up classes — UW ID Find instructors Look up office hours — HR ID
What About Instructors? Instructor schedule allowing instructors to edit their office hour information Authenticate — userid Look up classes Look up existing office hours — HR ID Allow editing
Multiple Identifiers Userid UW ID HR ID
One More Feature Store preferences Index by UW ID or by HR ID? Are there other choices?
Telephone Services Assigns Telephone Services ID Based on HR ID for employees Different number range for others Another space for non-personal phones
WatCard Assigns WatCard ID Same as UW ID for students Different number range for staff, etc. Another range for departmental charging Also assigns Library barcode
Library Voyager assigns internal Patron ID Barcodes outsourced to WatCard Auto-update from WatCard via Quest Some have more than one barcode
Registrar (Quest) Assigns UW ID Formerly from OUAC ID Now sequential from
Human Resources Assigns employee number
WatIAM Assigns database identifier Also assigns userid Tries to have one account per person Also lots of non-person accounts
Lots of Identifiers Telephone Services WatCard Library Registrar (Quest) Human Resources WatIAM Do any of these work for my example?
NO!
Required Solution Features Comprehensive Stable Identifiers
I Haven’t Mentioned… Active Directory Employee recruitment Alumni Duplicate avoidance and correction
Thanks to … John Cunningham (WatCard) Sean Mason (WatIAM) Joe Allen (Telephone Services) Alex McCulloch (Library)