Knowledge

Qlik Sense: Is it really necessary to create User Directory Connectors?

Article Number: 000054485 | Last Modified: 2018/11/21

Description

Sometimes it could be really tricky or troublesome to correctly create Qlik Sense UDCs fetching users from various sources such as generic LDAP service or files.
But is it really necessary?

Cause

n/a

Resolution

The short answer is no.

Reason:

To begin with, UDC or "Users" list has nothing to do with Authentication.
When non-AD users need to login Qlik Sense, these users always need to go through Customized Authentication process.
What an UDC does, is no more than fetching various user information(such as user name, groups, etc.) from user directories(and various other sources).
When configuring Customized Authentication process, the same user information also needs to be provided to Qlik Sense.
As we can see, same user information can be sent to Qlik Sense twice -- by UDC and by Authentication process
Ideally, if both sides are providing the same user information, then there will be no problem.
However, as both side(UDC and Authentication process) are highly configurable, the likelihood of mismatching user information is exceptionally high.
When mismatching happens, there will be various consequences:
- More severe: the user is marked inactive then can't use Qlik Sense anymore until manually activated again. But this user will be marked inactive again upon next UDC sync unless the mismatch in UDC is fixed.
- Less severe: user information fetched by UDC is replaced with user information provided by authentication process.
When there is no UDC, user information is always provided upon user login via authentication process.
When there is no UDC, there will not be any mismatching.
As we can see, UDC is not really necessary in a successful Qlik Sense deployment.

Suggestion:

In most situation, UDC is not necessary.
If needed, only create UDC after customized authentication method is implemented and tested. This is because Qlik Sense would always use user information from authentication process other than UDC. So it is better to configure UDC to match how authentication process is configured. The best way to do it is after at least some users are already imported to Qlik Sense then create UDC referring to those users.

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