Federation Security Services Guide › Federation Security Services Overview › Federation Security Services Concepts › User Mapping

User Mapping

User mapping is the ability to establish a relationship between a user identity at one business and a user identity at another business. This relationship is established by mapping remote users at a producing authority to local users at a consuming authority.

There are two types of mapping:

• One-to-one mapping maps a unique remote user directory entry at the producing authority to a unique user entry at the consuming authority.

  One-to-one mapping is often referred to as account linking, as it links an account at a producing authority site to an account at a consuming authority, as shown in the following illustration:

  

• N-to-one mapping maps a group of remote user directory entries to a single local profile entry.

  N-to-one mapping allows several user records at a producing authority to be mapped to one user record or profile at a consuming authority. An administrator at the consuming authority can use this type of mapping to define access control for a group of remote users, without having to maintain a record for each remote user.

  The following illustration shows n-to-one mapping: