Working with User Identifiers

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This page describes how to work with user identifiers in Esploro, as well as mapping user accounts to external systems.

User Identifiers Overview

User identifiers are an integral part of Esploro's researcher accounts. They identify the researcher's user account and can be used to connect the researcher with external accounts, such as a Student Information System/HR.

Every Esploro researcher has a user and every user has a primary identifier. Your institution can optionally enable additional user identifiers that are available (or required) to be added to a user.

User Managers/Administrators add or edit additional user identifiers when they add or edit users on the Find and Manage Users page (Admin > Manage Staff and Users).

Configuring User Identifier Types

Before adding additional user identifiers, the identifier types must be configured. The types are created and configured when setting up your institution.

Afterwards, a User Administrator or General System Administrator completes the configuration by configuring whether at least one additional user identifier type is mandatory, and the default identifiers that are generated automatically when registering users.

Ex Libris configures the list of additional user identifier types for each institution. However, most institutions have at least the following user identifier types available for Esploro:
- ORCID
- LCNAF
- ISNI
- Scopus
- ResearcherID
- arXiv
- ERA
- Pivot
- Pubmed
- Wikidata
- VIAF
- Any other local user identifier types required

More identifiers may display, but they are not relevant for Esploro.

When configuring the list of additional user identifier types, Support can set which types are available to be added to staff and/or public users.

To configure whether at least one additional user identifier type is mandatory when adding a user, add the Identifier 1 field for the relevant record type. When registering a user, you can add a user identifier type (other than the primary identifier) only if Identifier 1 is configured as a mandatory field.
To configure the automatic generation of user identifiers when registering users, see Configuring User ID Generation. You can configure different automatically generated values for the primary identifier or for any other user identifier. Identifiers are not automatically generated when adding users from the Find and Manage Users page.
To require that the primary identifier be in a specific format, configure primary_identifier_regex; see Configuring Other Settings.

Adding and Editing User Identifiers

To add or edit user identifiers for any type of user, you need one of the following roles:

User Manager
User Administrator

Adding or editing user identifiers for any user: You add a primary identifier to a user when adding a user (see Adding Users) or when editing users (Managing User Identifiers (Tab)). When adding a user, a primary identifier is mandatory. In addition, another user identifier is mandatory when a mandatory user identifier field is configured.
When editing a user, you can add, edit, or remove additional user identifiers (you can view, but not edit, the primary identifier). The list of available identifier types might be different for different user types (staff or public).

Mapping User Accounts to Other Systems

You can map your user accounts to user accounts in external systems either by mapping your user identifier in Esploro to the identifier in the other system or by sharing your identifiers with other systems.

Student Information System (SIS)

When your institution already manages users in a SIS, Esploro needs to retrieve the user information from the SIS and store only Esploro-specific information for the researcher and user. For example, the user names, passwords, and user identifiers may be managed in the SIS, while the researcher's affiliations, education and alternate names are stored in Esploro. User identifiers for external users can be marked as internal (managed in Esploro) or external.

SIS information is imported on a regular basis to Esploro using an integration profile. Information from the SIS overwrites any relevant conflicting information in Esploro. For more information, see SIS Overview in the Developer Network and Student Information Systems. You can define multiple SIS integration profiles, one for each combination of SIS and user record type. When defining a profile, you select the user identifier in Esploro to use to match the record exported from the SIS.

If your SIS does not offer not offer authentication services, can create users as external in Esploro, but assign passwords for them directly in Esploro. In this case, all the user information is managed from the SIS, but the passwords are stored in Esploro and managed by the Ex Libris Identity Service. When the user logs in, Esploro attempts both the external IdP and the internal one. If you would like to activate this behavior, please contact Ex Libris customer support.

You can also use the integration profile to export user information to the SIS, such as researcher affiliations, education and honors.

For more information see Working with Student Information Systems.

External Authentication: SAML, CAS, LDAP, Cloud IDP

If you use an external authentication system, you may need to map Esploro user IDs to the IDs used by the external system. For more information, see Authentication.