Fact Sheet: OfficePower Directory

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OfficePower Directory

Fact Sheet

This item was originally published on the OfficePower web site on
19th June 2000




	OfficePower Directory (with X.500/LDAP capability) Click here for picture of "Directory Search" The OfficePower Directory in OfficePower 2000 (and OfficePower/Xtra) is considerably enhanced enabling more flexible use and additionally the ability to access separately purchased X.500 Directory services. X.500 enables organizations to exploit the benefits of open directories, such as browsable hierarchy, security and the integration of directories from different mail systems. Public White Pages services, freely available via the Internet, can be easily accessed from the same interfaces. More varied search criteria based on attributes and operators (AND/OR/NOT) Can be used with mail addresses, both X.400 and Internet, personnel information, photographs and customised entry details Allows adoption of single organization wide ‘corporate-directory’ Browsing capability allowing traversal of organizational structure Works with public LDAP-standard services. Both external and local Directories can be searched simultaneously. Directory Enhancements The Directory within OfficePower has been enhanced in the following areas: Provides more flexible search interface with AND/OR/NOT operators Customisable results display Allows search/browse with X.500 or LDAP Directory services Extensive preferences and option settings, per service Allows search of X.500/LDAP Directory and public/personal Directory simultaneously Lookup tables available to aid search operations X.500 - Scaleable, Global, Standard The X.500 standard is rapidly being adopted for many purposes - Address fetching, Security, Document Management, External Web access and for providing a central accessible Directory for integrating disparate mail systems. In addition to pure X.500 Directory services (fully conformant to the international standard), a complementary access method allows much the same functionality from proprietary directory services. This method, LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), which is used by the OfficePower Directory interfaces, has been publicly adopted by more than 60 computer vendors. Many public Directory services (available on the Web) also support LDAP interfaces, such as large American White Pages services (four11, bigfoot etc), giving instant access to millions of entries. OfficePower users can now easily access these services from the new enhanced Directory product. Customisable As X.500 Directories can be fully tailored to the business application required - not limited to mail address fetching, corporate attributes can be provided to ensure that all the required organizational data is represented. The OfficePower Directory interface can be configured to display a wide range of attributes including photographs (viewable on PC terminals only), and cross-references (via See Also links) OfficePower Integration The OfficePower Directory, in addition to being available in its own right, is fully integrated with all THREE OfficePower user interfaces - ‘green screen’, OfficePower for Windows and OfficePower Web. It is just one key or click away! Mail addresses, X.400 or Internet, retrieved from any Directory source can be easily used within the mail system to send to users - or copied to personal distribution lists. As well as standard search operations using AND/OR/NOT operators, folder/update style tree browsing is available to traverse the organizational structure. Running your own X.500 service For customers wishing to run their own X.500 services, a new utility is provided to upload the OfficePower distribution list network into an X.500 Directory. Once there, all changes to the user population is automatically reflected in the X.500 Directory. A configurable mapping table allows the existing OfficePower extended user attributes to be mapped onto X.500 attributes as appropriate. The organizational attributes (department, location, orgunit etc.) can be used to form the basis of the X.500 tree structure. The existing local Directory generation utility is unchanged and can be used as a local backup for any central X.500 service. However, if replaced with an X.500-only strategy an added advantage is that mail based replication is reduced and valuable disk space restored to end user systems. Administrative features An extensive set of administrative tools allows customisation of all attributes used within entries and the way the results are displayed on a per-service basis, with lookup tables and default closemode display ordering. Many defaults can be changed by preference settings available to users. One Corporate Directory TeamWARE Office users have a similar facility allowing access to any central X.500 service. With X.500 you can create a truly centralised corporate or organizational Directory. As other vendors integrate LDAP functionality into their mail products the benefits to a multi-vendor organization are immense. Security X.500 allows access control on entries, parts of the organizational tree structure and individual attributes allowing flexibility on how the stored data is managed and accessed. The OfficePower Directory will conform to any security applied to access and to individual entries. Each user can supply name/password information to the X.500 Directory for authentication. This may be individually or publicly set for each service as required. Return to the top of this page.


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