The acronym LDAP stands for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol. It is a special set of software rules that allows people to easily locate files, devices, individual accounts, and organizations on a network. The network could be public, like the Internet, or it could be a private network that is only for use by a single organization.
An LDAP directory is arranged into a tree hierarchy that begins with a “root” directory and branches out into more detail to include organizations, departments, departmental subunits, and individual people, files, and shared resources like printers. The data located in an organization’s LDAP can be extraordinarily valuable when it can be communicated with the organization’s form or workflow software.
How LDAP Can Help with Online Forms and Workflows
One of the main reasons companies turn to online form and workflow software is that it helps cut down on duplication of effort. Electronic forms aren’t lost or damaged the way paper forms are, so there are far fewer re-dos with electronic forms. Synchronizing your LDAP takes this convenience even further.
Suppose a user logs into a workflow with their employee ID and password. When your workflow software is integrated with your company’s LDAP, which includes employee data like name, phone extension, department, and other important information, the LDAP can automatically feed the workflow user’s data into the workflow so they don’t have to spend time typing it in again.
Ensuring the Integrity of Your Data
To prevent corruption of your LDAP, your workflow software should only allow one-way integration. In other words, your workflow software can use data from the LDAP, but it can’t send data to the LDAP. That way the LDAP remains a singular “truth source” that won’t be damaged or corrupted by someone using workflow software.
Beyond that, ordinary security measures, like requiring two-factor authentication for employee sign-in, or otherwise limiting who can use a workflow to authorized personnel will allow an organization to enjoy the benefits of LDAP synchronization while minimizing the risks to LDAP content.
Benefits of Synchronizing LDAP with Your Workflow Software
Time savings that result from synchrony between your LDAP and your workflow or form software can be substantial. Rather than re-entering commonly used data like an employee’s name, ID number, department, date-of-hire, and other data, your workflow software can automatically synchronize with the LDAP in order to pick that data up and funnel it to the appropriate form fields automatically. Assuming the data in your LDAP is current and accurate, you can prevent errors in form-filling from propagating throughout a workflow.
PerfectApps is electronic form and workflow software that can be easily integrated with your LDAP. By doing this, authorized workflow users can fetch LDAP information and use it in a form or workflow without having to retype it, thus minimizing errors. You can make exceptions easily, like when someone still in your personnel LDAP is no longer with your company. You can choose LDAP data from any number of data “branches” and import it painlessly, saving everyone time and making workflows far more efficient.
In addition to being LDAP compatible, PerfectApps lets users create pixel-perfect forms and workflows by dropping and dragging elements into place, with no programming required. It offers both the flexibility and the power organizations need to manage data, forms, and workflows easily, and with the utmost accuracy. If you’re interested in the possibility of connecting your LDAP to workflow software, we invite you to view our training videos, including the one on LDAP synchronization. You’ll be astonished at how easy it is to do!
