Provisioning isn’t always about creating new things.  Handling duplicates when provisioning is an important part of a provisioning solution.  This is true no matter the kind of object that’s provisioned, what directory platform or platforms are involved, and whether the process is occurring as a one-off via a web form or thousands of records are being processed in a hands-free bulk process.

Options for Duplicate Handling When Provisioning with PeopleProvision

In PeopleProvision, you can configure what happens when a duplicate is encountered and what constitutes a duplicate.  You can configure this differently for different directory platforms which is important since multiple platforms might be involved in a single action.

When a duplicate is found, most implementations we’ve found choose to perform an update.  Other options include always creating a new item (this involves the solution finding a unique name) and ignoring.  Ignoring it is a good option if duplicates are an anomaly; you could set the solution to notify you if this happened.

PeopleProvision can be configured so that a small update by a user or automated bulk process can lead to more involved changes to your directory platform.  You can make this happen by pre-configuring business rules.  In addition to discussing duplicates, the video below contains a good example of this.