Polycom 3725-76302-001LI manual Connect to Microsoft Active Directory

DMA Operations Guide Connect to Microsoft Active Directory

Connect to Microsoft Active Directory

Connecting to Microsoft® Active Directory® simplifies the task of deploying conferencing to a large organization. All Polycom DMA system access to the Active Directory server is read-only and minimally impacts the directory performance. See “Microsoft Active Directory Integration” on page 163.

Note

If you’re not knowledgeable about enterprise directories in general and your specific implementation in particular, please consult with someone who is. Active Directory integration is a non-trivial matter.

Before integrating with Active Directory, be sure that one or more DNS servers are specified (this should have been done during installation and initial setup). See “Network Settings” on page 64.

If you’re deploying a supercluster of multiple geographically distributed Polycom DMA clusters, verify that you’ve assigned clusters to the territories in your site topology (see “Configure the Call Server and Optionally Create a Supercluster” on page 28) and decide which cluster is to be responsible for Active Directory integration.

Active Directory integration automatically makes the enterprise users (directory members) into Conferencing Users in the Polycom DMA system, and can assign each of them a conference room (virtual meeting room, or VMR). The conference room IDs are typically generated from the enterprise users’ phone numbers.

Note

Creating conference rooms for enterprise users is optional. If you want to integrate with Active Directory to load user and group information into the Polycom DMA system, but don’t want to give all users the ability to host conferences, you can do so. You can manually add conference rooms for selected users at any time. See “Conference Rooms Procedures” on page 335.

Once the Polycom DMA system is integrated with Active Directory, it reads the directory information nightly, so that user and group information is updated automatically as people join and leave the organization. The system caches certain data from Active Directory. In a superclustered system, one cluster is responsible for updating the cache, which is shared with all the clusters.

Between updates, clusters access the directory only to authenticate passwords (for instance, for management interface login); all other user information (such as user search results) comes from the cache. You can manually update the cache at any time.

32 Polycom, Inc.