Grouper at U-M Info and Panel Discussion
2021 Michigan IT Symposium Breakout Session from Thursday, December 16 @ 2 pm

MCommunity’s group management and directory services application and functionality is now over 20 years old. The ITS IAM team is taking the charge to transform some of its services to provide functions that better support the University community. An essential piece of this effort is implementing Grouper, a group management tool that can be used to help ensure that the right people are granted the right access at the right time to U-M resources. Grouper can automatically create groups based on institutional data, which can be used for multiple purposes, including access control. Grouper enables automatic maintenance and automatic synching of groups to other systems like Active Directory. Additionally, Grouper provides users with a more straightforward way to find out who is in a group, why and what that group is used for.

ITS is currently piloting Grouper by using it to manage who gets access to the Adobe CreativeCampus products as well as the U-M Virtual Sites tool. The IAM team is engaging with campus units to pilot Grouper in other ways, including managing access to network drives. The IAM team is leveraging these engagements with campus units to ensure Grouper is implemented in a way that will best meet broad campus needs in the future. Our presentation at the Michigan IT Symposium will include pilot participants for discussion around their use of Grouper and more information about what's to come with Grouper at U-M.

Presenters: Chris Hable, Liam Hoekenga, Aimee Lahann, Gail Lift, & Brendan Dailey, ITS & Jesse Reets, LSA

Area(s) of Focus: Knowledge