1 comment

Comment from: Georges Khairallah [Visitor] Email · http://www.foreignkid.com
***--
Thanks for the write up. I think it's helpful for someone who hasn't started to do anything with Aeries and UMRA, but it'll only give them a very broad idea, and will have no clue what to do after that :) ...
I'm saying this from experience, as it took me about 3 years to get my automation to work correctly on Aeries.

Without going into any details, IMHO, synchronizing students that are active is easier said than done, and also, even harder, is group memberships, especially if these are required based on class enrollment. (In my environment, I place students in specific AD security groups based on what classes they're enrolled in.)

Also, if a district is not using the Permanent ID for the student as their AD username (which I'm not in my district), there will be a need to either: 1- create a new custom field in Aeries to house the username for the students, or 2- create a middleware database (what I created) that ends up housing the student username, basic info, as well as a lot of other data related to the technical environment. (for instance, the home server that houses the student's home folder, whether the student is or isn't in AD, the path to the root of their home server. These details may seem redundant, but if most school district are similar to us, they'd still have a box of chocolates in terms of their user data, and it is hard to script for a single environment when you have so many different variables, and I found the middle ware database completely solves this problem, and would no longer rely on having a standard. (not that I'm not shooting for that, but Iat the same time, I can't wait until I have a fully homogeneous environment before starting to use UMRA :)

p.s: your line breaks seem to be all gone in your posts, it makes it quite hard to read them :-/

In any case, If I were to give advice to anyone integrating Aeries and UMRA. make sure you REALLY understand how the Aeries database works. There TONS of variables in there that would render your scripts completely inaccurate if you're not aware of them. (that's why my implementation took 3 years, and I'm still learning) .
08/11/10 @ 19:12

This post has 27 feedbacks awaiting moderation...

Leave a comment


Your email address will not be revealed on this site.

Your URL will be displayed.
PoorExcellent
(Line breaks become <br />)
(Name, email & website)
(Allow users to contact you through a message form (your email will not be revealed.)