•Determine data ownership.

For each piece of data, determine the person responsible for ensuring that the data is up-to-date.

•Determine data access.

If data are imported from other sources, develop a strategy for both bulk imports and incremental updates. As a part of this strategy, try to master data in a single place, and limit the number of applications that can change the data. Also, limit the number of people who write to any given piece of data. A smaller group ensures data integrity while reducing the administrative overhead.

•Document the site survey.

Because of the number of organizations that can be affected by the directory, it may be helpful to create a directory deployment team that includes representatives from each affected organization to perform the site survey.

Corporations generally have a human resources department, an accounting or accounts receivable department, manufacturing organizations, sales organizations, and development organizations. Including representatives from each of these organizations can help the survey process.

Furthermore, directly involving all the affected organizations can help build acceptance for the migration from local data stores to a centralized directory.

2.3.1 Identifying the applications that use the directory

Generally, the applications that access the directory and the data needs of these applications drive the planning of the directory contents. Many common applications use the directory:

•Directory browser applications, such as online telephone books

Decide what information (such as email addresses, telephone numbers, and employee name) users need, and include it in the directory.

•Email applications, especially email servers

All email servers require email addresses, user names, and some routing information to be available in the directory. Others, however, require more advanced information such as the place on disk where a user's mailbox is stored, vacation notification information, and protocol information (IMAP versus POP, for example).

•Directory-enabled human resources applications

These require more personal information such as government identification numbers, home addresses, home telephone numbers, birth dates, salary, and job title.

•Microsoft Active Directory

Through Windows User Sync, Windows directory services can be integrated to function in tandem with the Directory Server. Both directories can store user information (user names and passwords, email addresses, telephone numbers) and group information (members).

Style the Directory Server deployment after the existing Windows server deployment (or vice versa) so that the users, groups, and other directory data can be smoothly synchronized.

When examining the applications that will use the directory, look at the types of information each application uses. The following table gives an example of applications and the information used by each:

2.3 Performing a site survey

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