Profile sources allow you to import user information (such as name, address, or phone number) from external user repositories. User information can exist anywhere in your enterprise:
If the information resides on an Active Directory server, you can create an Active Directory remote profile source to extract it.
If the information resides on an LDAP server, you can create an LDAP remote profile source to extract it.
If the information resides on other systems, you can easily write your own profile provider and then create a remote profile source to extract the information.
The imported user information can be used to populate user profiles or can be passed to crawlers, remote portlets, or federated searches as user information. You must run a job associated with the profile source to periodically synchronize the user information in the portal with that in the external repository. For information about jobs, see About Jobs.
This topic discusses the following information:
To learn how to create or edit administrative objects (including profile sources and Profile Web Services), click here.
The Active Directory and LDAP remote profile source providers are available from Plumtree; you can use these providers to import user information from the associated server. If your user information resides in a custom system, such as a custom database, you can easily extract the information by writing your own remote profile source provider, using Plumtree EDK. To learn about developing your own Remote Profile Source provider, contact Customer Support.
Plumtree provides the following authentication source providers:
LDAP
Note: For information on obtaining profile providers, contact Customer Support. For information on installing profile providers, refer to the Installation Guide for Plumtree Corporate Portal or the documentation that comes with your profile provider or contact your portal administrator.
Create a remote profile source for each profile provider from which you want to import user information.
To make a remote profile source available to portal users:
Profile Web Services allow you to specify general settings for your remote user repository, leaving the more detailed settings (like domain specification) to be set in the associated remote profile sources. This allows you to create a different profile source to import information from each domain without having to repeatedly specify all the settings.
To learn about the Profile Web Service Editor, click one of the following editor pages: