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Penn State Online Directory Enhancements

Wednesday, August 21, 2002


posted on August 20, 2002

On Wednesday, August 21, 2002, Academic Services and Emerging Technologies (ASET) will implement several enhancements to the Penn State Online Directory, which will provide additional, more standardized directory search options for users within and visitors to the Penn State community, by migrating the current directory from PH (ph.psu.edu) to LDAP (ldap.psu.edu).

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a method for providing directory information, which was made available to the Penn State community in January, 2001. While PH has served the University community well, the international technical community has created LDAP as a protocol for interchanging directory information in a more standardized manner. LDAP enables new services such as the Penn State Portal and makes it easier to add friends and colleagues at other institutions to e-mail address books. Additional information and instructions for configuring clients (such as the e-mail clients Eudora and Microsoft Outlook, and various Web browsers) to use LDAP are found at http://aset.its.psu.edu/ldap/ on the Web.

Enhancements

Enhancements to Penn State's Online Directory include:

  • a new searchable departmental directory, which is available at http://www.psu.edu/ldap/dept/, and provides departmental data such as links to Web sites (where applicable), phone and fax numbers, and surface mailing addresses.
  • a new, "people search" Web page, which is available at http://www.psu.edu/ldap/ (replaces http://www.psu.edu/ph/), and provides options for listing abbreviated or full directory listings.
  • a ph.psu.edu to ldap.psu.edu gateway, which enables those users who have clients configured to use ph.psu.edu to make a search request to LDAP via PH.

Penn State faculty, staff, and students will notice some slight changes to the way in which directory information is presented. The presentation of directory data directly reflects the data from official University data stewards, including but not limited to the Office of Human Resources (OHR) and the Office of the University Registrar. In other words, the presentation of data is uniform with official University data providers, and is in compliance with federal and state privacy laws.

Resources

Getting Help

For assistance with configuring clients to use LDAP, please direct inquiries to the ITS Help Desk at helpdesk@psu.edu. Help Desk locations are available at http://css.its.psu.edu/consulting/consult.html#hd.


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Last revised: Wednesday, August 21, 2002.