[phpGroupWare-users] Re: LDAP and batch create users

[Raymond Chan]

Dave,

Thanks for the helpful reply.  Sorry I did not get back to you until now since 
I've been away for a while, but now I'm back trying to revisit my PHPgw issues 
again.  

WARNING: this is an extremely long message, and I sincerely thank you for your 
time.  I've got all these questions and ideas floating in my mind and hope 
someone can advise me on the best course of action... Here it goes:

You're correct in the sense that with me having at least 80 groups, that it may 
not be the best idea to put them all in separate domains--what if Professor A 
from domain 1 wants to all of a sudden share some files with Professor B from 
domain 55?  The original thought to keep all groups in separate domains is 
because each is essentially a separate entity, but there will be rare occasions 
when they want to cross share.  However, if this happens, there is no way to 
easily migrate a user from a different domain into a certain other domain to 
address the above problem, right?

Another issue with having so many domains is a huge drop down menu I will get 
for 80 groups.  You put up a good point that I can have an auto-detect based on 
server host name in my VirtualHost config in Apache.  However, cyber security 
policies have been tightening up at my University and they want everything in 
SSL now, and as far as I know I cannot have a SSL certificate for so many 
"sites" (phpgw domains) I will be hosting.  I'd have to do some fancy stuff 
like using IP Aliasing for as many domains that I have to host multiple sites  
on a single IP through SSL.

Do you foresee a problem in putting every group (perhaps 100+) in the same 
domain?  I figure this is the only solution that will accommodate the 
flexibility I need.  I can then create groups for each Professor's Lab and add 
all of this professor's employees to his/her group.  Then I will set 
appropriate ACLs so that each group can only see their own stuff (files, 
calendars, etc).  Does this seem plausible?  The main reason I wanted everyone 
under separate domains is so that I can assign a designated "lab manager" as 
admin within each group to take care of creating any new users within their 
group if the professor hires anyone new, and to maintain their own site.  If I 
put everyone under the same domain, I will have to be the one that will have to 
manage users within at least 80 groups.  This will get very time consuming and 
hairy.

And as far as batch creating users...if I can grab the data from our LDAP and 
script out what user in supposed to be in what group... I don't know where to 
begin to batch create any users into PHPgw from these results w/ the 
appropriate group and app ACLs.

Any advice about any of this is appreciated.  I know I have a lot of general 
issues, and I thank you very much for your time and offering such a intuitive 
and easy to use software package and your help in supporting it.  I've already 
gotten some good feedback from the one group I've been testing phpGW with (and 
these people are NOT tech savvy at all).

Ray


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