Active Directory AD Data Connector Needed

[dataMack]

It would be great if we could have a Windows Active Directory data connector tool added to the standard Alteryx toolset.

MS Excel Power Query and PowerBI both can connect to Active Directory for use as a data source, but are both very cumbersome to use.  Having a connector in Alteryx that can read AD data into a workflow would be super helpful for a long list of use cases.  A couple that are top of mind for me are:

-Leveraging group membership info for dynamic distribution of reports or datasets

-Being able to build reporting and dashboards about the organization (useful for Tech audit, HR, etc.) 

I've seen links to an old project on GitHub of someone that started development on this, but the method (just copy these random .dlls into your program directory) is seriously frowned upon by any enterpise IT.  Would be great if Alteryx could pick up that work, polish it a bit and add it to the actual Alteryx Designer toolset.

[Aguisande]

Due to a challenge a customer threw at me, I recently found this on Github and shared with the Community (http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/LDAP-AD-as-data-source/m-p/17461#M1327):

https://github.com/tobiasmh/Alteryx-Ldap-Input-Plugin-Binaries

Tested it, and it works great. I connected to the developer (Tobias Montagna Hay), and he offered to share the source code with the product team.

So It'll be good that this plugin/Tool can be considered for future releases of Alteryx (mostly because it's already developed).

Hope this helps others as much as it did to me.

Best,

_AG_

[dataMack]

I had posted a question about this back in October: http://community.alteryx.com/t5/Data-Sources/Active-Directory-LDAP-as-a-data-source/m-p/6057/ The issue with that GitHub solution is that it requires admin access to write to the Alteryx program directory. Would be nice if Alteryx would build in a AD-read tool for data input (the way Power BI has) as one of the standard connectors.

[rob_cottrell]

I tried installing this today, but couldn't get the tool to show up in Alteryx.  I'm using Alteryx 10.5.  Is there anything special you have to do, other than copy the .DLLs to the Alteryx\bin\Plugins folder, and restart Alteryx?  

[Aguisande]

Hi Rob:

You need to unblock the DLL in windows

[rob_cottrell]

Thanks for the feedback.  Unfortunately, I already checked, and the .DLLs aren't blocked.

[Aguisande]

Rob,

Maybe you can connect directly to Tobias Montagna-Hay, who created the connector to get extra help @ https://github.com/tobiasmh/Alteryx-Ldap-Input-Plugin-Binaries

[eberlem]

Fully agree. Actually, I am suffering from this challenge as well and do not have a solution, except exporting the memberships into a sheet.

I assume most of us facing the same challenge. How do you have solved this topic as of now?

[joeGade]

The Tools is not working for us , any  Place where we have this working? 

Error :Error: LdapInputPlugin (1): LDAP failed with error code 4

[new_user]

I can see data using Browse tool only. Report is not generated using Render Tool. Is that regular?

For example, when I do union of result that I get with Ldap Input Tool and Text Input, report is not generated. 

[ChadM]

Any update on this? I have at least two customers who are interested and could benefit.