Polar Help Desk Professional :: FAQ

Polar Help Desk FAQ Categories

1. Top FAQ
2. General FAQ
3. Installation FAQ
4. User Interface Customization FAQ
5. Users FAQ
6. Active Directory & NTLM Integration FAQ
7. Incidents and E-mail FAQ
8. Service Level Management (SLM) FAQ
9. Knowledge Base FAQ
10. Reports FAQ
11. Licensing FAQ
12. All FAQ In One Page FAQ

Active Directory & NTLM Integration FAQ

How does Active Directory Integration work in Polar Help Desk?

Using Active Directory integration you can import your users from the Active Directory using the LDAP protocol. When import operation begins, Polar Help Desk will match the usernames in the database with the ones in the Active Directory. If user is not found in the database, it will be imported/created. If user already exists in the database, he will be ignored. Based on the LDAP filter you can control what type of users will be imported. This is useful if you need to import one group of users to a specific Polar Help Desk group/role. Also, you can specify what user information will be imported. The integration with AD is manual; you can import your users with their passwords and usernames. Once you import your users from AD to Help Desk you cannot synchronize passwords. After you import users from the Active Directory, you can set Polar Help Desk to use integrated windows authentication (NTLM). This way users on your company network will be automatically logged in based on their username. Users are imported in format DOMAIN\Username. This is the full username that also matched one given by the integrated windows authentication (NTLM).

Active Directory Synchronization

The integration with AD is manual; you can import your users with their passwords and usernames. Once you import your users from AD to Help Desk you cannot synchronize passwords.

In the options screen you can enable the active directory authentication. How to setup the LDAP string?

For authentication simply set the path to the location within AD tree from which to start searching for the users. Note that users with the same username must exist in the Polar Service Desk.

How do I enable NTLM authentication?

To enable the NTLM, you need to go to the Control Panel > Administration Tools > Internet Information Services.
Find the virtual folder where Help Desk is installed and browse for the HTTPRequestNTLMLogin.aspx. It should be on this path: HelpDesk > CommonDialogs > HTTPRequestNTLMLogin.aspx.
Right click on this file and select properties. Once the dialog has opened, go to tab File Security and click on the Edit button in the Anonymous access and authentication control. Once the dialog opens deselect all the check boxes you see except the “Integrated windows authentication” check box. Apply the changes and close the Internet Information Services window.
Now, when you go to the Login page, you will notice that your windows login name is already set as the username. Provided that this username also exists in the Service Desk database, all you need to do is click the login button.

When we import users, how does the Help Desk know what group or groups to place the users in? Can it tell by the group membership from AD?

When importing from AD you must specify Destination Group since every user in Help Desk must have at least one group defined.
Based on the LDAP filter you can control what type of users will be imported. This is useful if you need to import one group of users to a specific Polar Help Desk group/role. Also, you can specify what user information will be imported.

How can I setup the translation table? I made this but it is complaining about it.

<translation version="1">*
<translate from="User Logon Name" to="UserName"/>*
<translate from="Description" to="Description"/> *
<translate from="mail" to="Email"/>*
</translation>*

Sometimes IE implementation of the text area tag in the HTML adds trailing line feed characters. Please make sure you delete these otherwise the .xml will not be accepted by the parser. We are working on improving this system and will attempt to remove manual .XML scripting from the Polar Service Desk.
Assuming that you are importing users from the AD, here is an example about how it is done:

(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=User) (givenname=*)(sn=*)(mail=*)(sAMAccountname=*))
<translation version="1"><translate method=
"AddDomainPrefix" from="sAMAccountname" to="UserName"/>
<translate from="sn" to="LastName"/><translate from=
"givenname" to="FirstName"/>
<translate from="mail" to="Email"/></translation>

Note that you will need to enter username and password for the administrator account if sAMAccountname is to be extracted properly

Can I import different fields from active directory?

Different fields can be imported from the active directory. This is done through the Translation Table. In Translation Table you can specify which fields from the AD will go into which fields in the Polar Help Desk database.