When IIQ Before a Birthright Email Provisioning was written there was a long sequence of tests and steps that were required. Over the last five years, however, some of the tests have been relaxed and some processing has been moved elsewhere.
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The Identity Management IIQ (which shares Java code with Email Provisioning) now calls some of the code written for Email Provisioning when it assigns a new Netid. Specifically, it creates an AD User object and it reserves an Email Alias.
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account can be created, there must be an initialized AD and Azure AD user object and an Email alias must have been reserved. Five years ago when the code was being written, none of the prerequisites could be assumed. Therefore, the processing starts at the beginning (“Has this identity been assigned a Netid?”) and checks each prerequisite in logical order. When every requirement is met, the account is created. If something has not yet been done, it skips the identity until next time.
Yale has other requirements, and many things that were originally just a prerequisite for Email are now required for other systems. Over time, most of this preprocessing is now done by other systems:
The Netid and Email Alias are now created by Java code in the Identity Management IIQ instead of Oracle stored procedure calls. In both cases uniqueness of the identifier is guaranteed by a unique key constraint on the database table, with a retry for another identifier if an error indicates a duplicate value.
There is a rule that an O365 account cannot be created until the Azure AD User is assigned a region (of the world) in which to store the mail. The Windows AD Connector was changed to set the region of all users to “US” when the Azure AD User object is first created from the Local AD object.
O365 Licenses are now assigned by “group-based provisioning” managed by Grouper.
The Email Provisioning IIQ now has to update Email routing fields of AD, so it now aggregates identity data with affiliations MEMBER and AFFILIATE in addition to the previous affiliations entitled to Brighright creates identities from a view on the IDRIdentities. Originally that view only included affiliations entitled to Birthright mail (STUDENT, FACULTY, STAFF, and EMPLOYEE).
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However, when the AD Daily Updater was replaced it became necessary to extend the view to include the other affiliations (MEMBER and AFFILIATE) that might have a mail account. So today there is already an Identity object in that IIQ instance for everyone who might request a mail account.
The Email Provisioning instance of IIQ has data on the Sponsored Identities and Academic Affiliates for whom a manual Email account might be requested and even before it runs, all the preliminary work has already been done. If we define some new flag in a database or AD that indicates it should create mail for these users, it can fill in a few additional fields and then do the two remaining steps of Enable-RemoteMailbox and setting the Email Alias MAILBOX and EMAILTO to “netid@connect.yale.edu”.
However, there is one situation where Birthright Email processing is triggered in a way that was not part of the original design. It happens to do the right thing in existing cases, but we need to walk through the problem to make sure this new use will not cause problems.
Birthright Email was written to provide mail accounts to completely new users. It works flawlessly for anyone who gets a new AD User object that has no mail account connected to it, and any Netid that has no Eliapps account. If IAM deleted old mail when users left the university, it would work as designed.
However, we have discovered that people leave the university and once they have no active affiliation they are deleted from some Identity systems including Email Provisioning. Then they return, frequently in a different role that requires a different type of Email. Email Provisioning sees this as a new Identity, but when it goes to create a new Email account the request collides with the old undeleted Email account.
This is not necessarily a problem. still double checks each prerequisite before processing a user, its daily reports and special reporting will show a user who has entered processing and not completed. This will alert IAM personnel to investigate and find out what is wrong.
Since SI and Academic Affiliate users are now in its identity database, all that is needed for IIQ to provision mail is an indicator that a request has been made and approved. This indicator could be a column in a StagingDB table that gets aggregated, or it could be a Global Variable in the IIQ identity object. This indicator is then added to the variables examined to decide which identities should be given mail accounts.
Email Provisioning is not a Workflow triggered by an event. It processes identities that evaluate to being mail-entitled but have not yet had a mail account created (as represented by the EmailAddress variable of the identity which is set when the Primary Email Alias has a Mailbox value). If a new request is created and approved, but when it arrives at Email Provisioning the user already has an EmailAddress then the identity will not enter processing in the first place and the request will be treated as complete without any processing.
No substantial new logic is required. The new processing for MEMBER or AFFILIATE who requests mail is essentially the same as would be the case if instead that person was hired as an EMPLOYEE and received the mail account with the current processing, except that Yale may decide not to create a NoMail Eliapps account for MEMBER and AFFILIATE requests while such an account is always created for EMPLOYEEs.
Otherwise, IIQ will do two or possibly three things:
It will call Enable-RemoteMailbox on the Netid which updates the Local AD and Azure AD object, sets the UPN, mail, MailNickName, and some ProxyAddresses values in Azure. This operation can fail if the Mailbox already exists, but in this case there is nothing to do.
For Birthright Entitled users IIQ would create a NoMail Eliapps account. This processing may be skipped for these new requests depending on the requirements we are given.
It will change the reserved Email Alias to have a Mailbox of netid@connect.yale.edu and an EmailTo of aliasname@yale.edu which in turn will set the Email Address in IDR and the directories.
The UnDead
Birthright Email processing was written to assign mail to new users. It works flawlessly for new identities with new Netids and no prior AD or Google entries.
However, if someone loses their active affiliation and their Source of Identity, then IIQ regards them as deleted and removes them from its database. Should they return with a new source of Identity and become eligible for an Email account, they go through Birthright processing because they are a new IIQ identity. During the processing, IIQ may encounter an existing RemoteMailbox on the AD User object or an existing Google G Suite User object for the Netid.
Failing to create an account because one already exists is not an error. The user is supposed to have mail and ends up with mail, even if it is an old account. There are three possibilities:
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If the user previously had an O365 mail account and it is still active, then Birthright processing will clean up any missing attribute values and reuse the old account. If the user is in a school that ordinarily gets Eliapps mail accounts then converting from O365 to Eliapps requires a special request to the Help Desk and is outside the scope of the mailbox creation process.
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If the user previously had Eliapps mail but now is entitled to O365, then an O365 account is created. The old Eliapps account is left alone. Because all mail coming to “@yale.edu” now flows through Exchange Online, it will discover the O365 Mailbox and start delivering mail to that account. There is still some confusion and it would be useful for the Help Desk to clean it up, but everything happens by default to do what the rules say should be done.
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several possible results:
Even though the user lost affiliation, the old Email account may have remained active and the user still has an Email Address. When a new affiliation is assigned to this Identity, it will not enter Birthright processing because the Email Address indicates there is no work do be done.
Without regard to the status of the mail account in O365 or Google, if the Primary Email Alias has a null Mailbox (the alias is “Reserved” rather than active) then Birthright processing begins as if the user has no mail. In some cases it will detect that a step has already been performed and skip it. In other cases it will perform a “create” operation that fails because there is already a duplicate account.
Since Birthright processing first assigns a type of mail based on affiliation, if the user is currently a student in a School that gets Eliapps, an attempt will be made to create a mail Enabled Eliapps Google account. Such an account will be named by the Primary Email Alias (firstname.lastname@yale.edu). NoMail Eliapps accounts would have been named netid@yale.edu and therefore may not be seen as a duplicate. However, now that the Mail Relays no longer exist and all incoming mail goes through Exchange Online, if the user has an O365 mailbox at all, then all mail will be delivered to O365 and the Eliapps account will never receive anything. The user will also have confusing directory entries. Exchange Online will insist that some Azure AD for Email Addresses be set to point to the UPN, which in turn is set to the Primary Email Alias. Therefore the Alias and Local AD entries will indicate Eliapps mail while the Azure AD and Exchange will indicate O365 mail. This user may now be broken and may need to be fixed by the Help Desk.
If the user should have O365 mail based on the current affiliation, then IIQ will try to do an Enable-RemoteMailbox. IIQ will then set the Email Alias Mailbox to point to O365. Exchange Online will now try to deliver incoming mail to the O365 mailbox.
When a user is explicitly deprovisioned other changes are made to an O365 or Eliapps mail account to block mail delivery. For example, there is a “Don’t accept mail from anyone except: Elvis” list. These manual blocks have to be cleared by someone running a Powershell script. IIQ generates a report every day of people it processes for Email, and one of the columns in the report flag deprovisioned users. I read the report each day and run a Powershell script on anyone it identifies as previously deprovisioned. This takes a minute or two each day but addresses the problem.
Adding specifically requested Sponsored Identities and Academic Affiliates to the set of people processed by Birthright does not change anything. New identities with no mail will get new O365 accounts just as they would have gotten automatically if they were employees. Users with an active Email account should not have made the request, but it such a request comes in Birthright processing will ignore them since there is nothing to do. Deprovisioned users will show up in the report and get additional manual processing.
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flags. This will work the same for any new SI or Affiliate people who also get processed.
The new behavior of IIQ when a request is made to assign mail to an SI will be exactly the same as its current behavior should the same person have entered Birthright processing as an employee (except that we may decide not to try and create a NoMail Eliapps account for an SI).
Changes
The 5:30 AM Sequential Task
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Enable-RemoteMailbox for anyone entitled to O365 Mail.
Create an Eliapps account (Mail or NoMail).
Although the requirement is described as “giving mail to an SI or Affiliate”, the existing code also gives a no-Mail account on the other system (O365 or Eliapps). The code would have to be changed if this new class of users is not supposed to also get a no-Mail account in the other systemWe may decide not to create an Eliapps account for this new class of manually requested SI mail users. However, to avoid creating the Eliapps account we need to create a new Role with different Entitlements, which is a slightly larger programming effort than simply allowing them to get the same NoMail Eliapps that Birthright O365 users get.
Grouper
For this to work, these new users also have to be put in a Group that will get the appropriate O365 licenses. Today this is done by Grouper. IIQ could do it, but we have decided to assign this function exclusively to Grouper.
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