EZRentOut also integrates with your LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) or Active Directory servers. Customers in your organization can use their LDAP credentials to access EZRentOut. Enable LDAP Server Integration from Settings → Add Ons.
Note: In EZRentOut, LDAP Integration only allows your customers to access your EZRentOut account.
What is LDAP/Active Directory?
LDAP or Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) stores directory data and manages communication between customers and domains, including customer logon processes, authentication, and directory searches. An LDAP directory is organized in a simple “tree” hierarchy. LDAP is most commonly used in medium to large companies.
Why integrate your Active Directory with EZRentOut?
Some of our subscribers wanted to ‘sync’ their customers’ database with EZRentOut or wanted to avoid replicating LDAP customers in EZRentOut. For such cases, we allow an integration with LDAP servers.
Whitelisting the IPs on your LDAP server
You may need to whitelist our IP addresses on your LDAP server. To whitelist our IPs on your Directory Server, use the following two IPs:
1. 54.208.123.254
2. 52.2.223.197
Basic Settings
Once enabled, you’ll see a list of settings required to complete the LDAP integration successfully. See image below:
–LDAP Server: The IP address or URL of your company’s Directory Server. (Note: Make sure to fill in the correct IP address to avoid a connection error later)
– LDAP Server Port: The port on which your directory server listens to requests.
– LDAP Admin Login: This should be the complete ‘dn’ (domain component) of the admin user on your company’s directory server who is able to search through all of your directory users i.e. customers.
– LDAP Admin Password: Password of the admin user on your directory server.
– LDAP Login Attribute: The attribute that your customers will use to login to their account. The default value is ‘cn’ (common name) but you can change it to any attribute e.g. ‘mail’.
– LDAP Encryption Enabled: Select this setting only if your directory server allows secure connections.
Once you’ve filled all the above settings, click ‘Verify Connection’ to ensure successful integration.
Setting up Organizational Units
Identify the organizational unit (one or more) where your EZRentOut customers exist. All customers in that organizational unit(s) will have access to EZRentOut, and any customer outside the given organizational unit(s) won’t be able to log in. If you have a nested OU structure (e.g. For example if you’re a university and you’re renting out equipment to students or faculty members. In this case, School of Business Management is an OU, which has two sub-OUs School of Marketing and School of Finance) then all the sub-OUs also need to be listed. In this example, we’ll list 3 OUs; School of Business Management, Marketing, and Finance.
Save the above settings by hitting the ‘Update’ button at the top of the page.
LDAP Attributes
You can also sync additional attributes if you wish. The default attributes are the ones shown below:
Apart from all these, you can also map custom fields. To do so, select the ‘Enable Custom Fields Mapping in LDAP’ option. You will then see all the custom fields that you have created and can now map, as shown below:
Note: Once you enable custom fields mapping in LDAP, all mandatory custom fields must be mapped. Any user that is being imported from LDAP but has missing values for mandatory fields will not be imported unless the mandatory field has a default value.
Email alerts for successful syncs
You can also set up alerts to be sent after LDAP users are synced. To do so, go to Alerts → My Alerts tab → Customers section and select the ‘LDAP Users Sync’ option.
This email is only sent to the account owner, admins, and supervisors. You can also send alerts as part of the daily digest. If you click on ‘Sample View’, it shows you the email that will be sent in the alert.
Importing/Updating Customers
Once your LDAP settings are in place, you can import the customers from your AD using the ‘Sync with LDAP’ button in the Customers tab (in the More dropdown menu).
You can also sync (update) the EZRentOut customers with your LDAP customers, using the ‘Complete Sync’ option. The sync process can be automated by enabling the ‘auto syncing of customers’ setting at Settings → Add Ons → LDAP Server Integration.
Note: A common issue for an unsuccessful import/sync process is not having Last Name and Email attributes configured in your LDAP server. Also look out for invalid customers’ email addresses.
Advanced Options
Go to Settings → Add Ons → LDAP Server Integration and you will see the following 4 advanced options.
a) Enable auto syncing of customers: Check this option to automate sync of EZRentOut customers with LDAP customers. This sync occurs once every day.
b) Automatically deactivate deleted LDAP customers: If selected, the suspended customers in LDAP are automatically disabled in EZRentOut. This ensures that EZRentOut access will automatically be revoked for the customers you’ve suspended in LDAP.
c) Automatically activate LDAP customers: If some inactive EZRentOut customers are found in LDAP server, they will be reactivated on the sync.
d) Provision all new customers: If selected, customers from your LDAP (selected OUs) will be automatically imported, if they aren’t present in your EZRentOut customers’ list.
What information is synced when LDAP sync takes place?
Only three fields are synced:
- First Name
- Last Name
- The email
Provisioning customers as they access EZRentOut
If you don’t import or sync customers as detailed above, they’ll be created in EZRentOut and synced as they access the account.
Sign In experience
Your customers can use their LDAP Credentials on your Log In screen. If you’d like to remove the ‘Login with Google’ and ‘Login with Windows’ options, you can do so from Settings → Company Settings → Authentication.
Note: The customers need to login at least once after the LDAP Integration to show up in your EZRentOut account, provided they are not synced.
Supported by ADFS
The LDAP integration is supported by ADFS, so you can rest easy knowing you get to enjoy all the benefits that ADFS has to offer, such as:
- Secure account provisioning
- Hassle-free account credential management
- Easy account management
- Simplified account deactivation
- Effective change management
For more assistance, drop us an email at support@ezo.io.
