Previously, I posted on Enabling "Single Sign On" with SIF. Interestingly enough, on July 5th Follett Software is releasing version 6.5 of their Destiny Resource Management Solution that implements support for LDAP and can make use of the SIF Authentication object. Here's how it works...

If Destiny is completely integrated with the SIS using its SIFAgent, all of the patrons within Destiny are populated from StudentPersonal and StaffPersonal objects received from the SIS during synchronization. In addition, if a provider of the Authentication object is available in the zone, Destiny will also pull in the network identities of the students and staff from the Authentication provider. By default, it pulls in the network username of the users.

Destiny can then be configured to support LDAP authentication for students and/or staff. Once this is complete, Destiny patrons can log in using their network usernames and passwords.

A couple of technical notes about Destiny / Active Directory integration using SIFWorks Directory Manager.

The default, out-of-the-box behavior of a SIFWorks Directory Manager/ Destiny integration is that the sAMAccountName (otherwise known as the NT UserName) from Active Directory will be pulled in and populated in the Destiny Username field. This will be sufficient in most cases for succesful integration using LDAP. However, both SIFWorks Directory Manager and the Destiny SIF Agent have completely customizable mappings to and from SIF. Other network identity fields such as userPrincipalName, domain name, or DistinguishedName could also be used to fulfill more advanced suthentication scenarios, such as support for multiple domains.