Synchronizing user groups with Active Directory

By default, the user property values and group memberships in Meridian are managed manually as described in Creating and editing user accounts and Creating and editing user groups. Those methods are satisfactory for small numbers of users and groups or when Microsoft Active Directory is not used extensively to manage users' privileges. However, many medium to large organizations rely on Active Directory to manage all users' access to network resources through Active Directory groups. Managing similar or identical Meridian groups separately can be inconvenient and error-prone.

Meridian Enterprise includes a program to synchronize Meridian user information and group memberships. The program allows you to map Active Directory groups to corresponding Meridian groups. The members of the mapped Active Directory groups will be synchronized with the Meridian groups and the user information for each user can also be synchronized. The program provides options that control what information is synchronized to Meridian.

The program can run in interactive mode as described in the following task. It can also be run in silent mode as a scheduled task to maintain synchronization by configuring the its initialization file as described in the following topics.

Note    The program is installed on a computer only when the Administrator components are selected during Meridian installation.

To run the program interactively:

1. Run ADSyncUsers.exe. It is located at C:\Program Files\BC-Meridian\Program by default. The Active Directory User Synchronizer dialog box appears.
2. Click options or type values using the descriptions in the following table.

3. Click Get Groups to retrieve the Active Directory group names and fill the AD groups list.
4. To create a new group mapping:

   1. Select an Active Directory group from AD groups that you want to map to a Meridian group.

      Note    You may map the same AD group to multiple Meridian groups.

   2. Select a group fromMeridian groups that you want to map to the group specified in AD groups.
   3. Click Add Mapping to create a mapping between the two selected groups.
5. To delete a group mapping:
   3. Select a mapping in Mapped groups and click Delete Mapping.
6. Click Synchronize to begin synchronization using the current settings. Click Exit to close the tool.