Active DIrectory Integration etc.

[noeyedeer]

I'm trying to get my head around possible business solutions for a relative simple business problem.

We want to provide secure users access for individuals to be able to view their monthly company mobile phone call charges.

My idea is that we just dump this info in a SQL DB and use Crystal Enterprise to report of this. Where it becomes ugly is authenticating users....

We are about to move from NDS onto Active Directory and I'm hoping this will make this easier. Am I correct in assuming if we used the NT Authentication Provider in Crystal we can authenticate users directly off Active Directory. If so, will this also solve heirarchical authentication issues of a manager being able to view the phone call charges of their employee as well as their own?

Will building a .NET application and the interfaces it provides with Crystal and/or Active Directory help or is this unnecessary?

Any thoughts much appreciated, Sarah.

 

[beanwen]

As I knew, CE8.5 didn't support ADS, but support other LDAP service like iplanet, you may check it at crystaldecisions.com to see if it supports NDS.
Also I heard CE9.0 supports ADS.

NT authentication is different with LDAP, you can find it with CE docs.

Regarding to heirarchical authentication issues, do you mean 'view time security'? View time security is authorization, which means one user can only view part of the report, e.g. manager can view the employees' under him/her and his/her bill info, employee can only view his/her bill.

Hope it help you clarify.

Ben

 

[CEprofessional]

Our company administrtors just updated to ADS and did not tells until our system crashed completely. We are actually in the process of fixing it now and are looking for suggestions. Crystal says there may not be a fix. On CE's support website they claim to support ADS but if you ask their Tech Support they say they do not. I would not advise moving to ADS if you are using CE NT Authentification.

Regards.

 

[noeyedeer]

Thanx for your responses.

Ben - yes, I do mean view time security.

CEprof - I guess your response comes as no great surprise. In the 16 page white paper I downloaded from crystaldecisions.com on CE Security Concepts there is only one 'NOTE' which mentions Active Directory. I quote:

"The NT Authentication provider is compatible with NT4 or Windows 2000 Active Directory user databases."

Sounds like it's not so compatible at all!!

Theoretically though the .NET framework does support both Active Directory abd Crystal Reports and hence I could achieve the functionality I require here?

Thanks again........

 

[tid959]

Contact Technical Support.

Last time I spoke with them the patch for Active Directory Authentication for CE8.5 was supporsed to be released in March.

Good Luck

 

[cutiger93]

There is a plug-in available now.

http://support.crystaldecisions.com/communityCS/FilesAndUpdates/ce85_adplugin_en.zip.asp

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
AD Authentication ( using the plug-in) is working fine in my 8.5 Environment.Adding the plug-in was very straightforward and it is relatively easy to configure.

I do not know enough about the heirarchical abilities of AD ( and its use by CE ) to comment on that part.