Workarounds for dealing with attributes

I blogged previously about how annoying it can be to scroll through all the attribute objects in NW IDM.  However, I recently remembered a work around that can help with managing all the attributes.

If there are attributes that you know you won’t need, do one of two things:

1. Delete them – This might seem somewhat obvious, but you’d be supposed how many people think that the attribute objects are critical to NW IDM.  Most are not, but some (MSKEYVALUE, those dealing with roles and privileges come to mind) But to be on the safe side, consider option #2.
2. Rename them – I usually put a ‘z’ in front of the attribute (i.e., zMX_ACCOUNTING_NUMBER) so it drops to the bottom of the list. 

I’m more partial to #2, because I’ve always found that as soon as I delete something, I wind up needing it.

While we are talking about renaming attributes, here’s some other tips:

• If there’s an attribute that I’ll need quite often, I’ll put an underscore ‘_’ in front of it so it goes to the top of the list (i.e., _ldapDN)
• When creating attributes use prefixes to group them together “home_address”, “home_email”
• Finally, try and keep attribute names and prefixes as short as possible, but not so short that they are hard to keep straight.
  • Prefixes: P_ = Personal, H_ = Home, W_ = Work, R_ = Remote, C_ = Contractor, etc
  • Names are tougher since language localization and organizational standards freqently get in the way

I’d be interested to see what others are doing in this regard as well.