openproject/docs/system-admin-guide/authentication/ldap-authentication/ldap-group-synchronization

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Synchronize LDAP and OpenProject groups (Premium feature)

Note: This feature is available for the Enterprise Edition only for OpenProject versions 7.4+. For more information and differences to CE, see this page.

In OpenProject EE, you can synchronize LDAP group memberships defined through the groupOfNames LDAP object class. This guide assumes that you:

• • have at least one group defined in OpenProject (See the “Managing groups” guide for more information on how to create and edit groups),
  • have set up your LDAP authentication source (See the “Manage LDAP authentication” guide)
  • have at least one LDAP entry with a groupOfNames object class and at least one member reference to an entry within your base DN of your LDAP authentication source. We use the inverse memberOf filter to determine the members of a group entry.

For the sake of simplicity, we assume that in this guide, your LDAP structure looks like the following:

You have two groups cn=groupA,ou=groups,ou=example,ou=com and cn=groupB,ou=groups,ou=example,ou=com with two and one users, respectively*.* Your base DN is ou=people,ou=example,ou=com.

LDAP group synchronization

LDAP group synchronization augments the memberships defined by administrators in an existing OpenProject group. Important things to note are:

• Only existing groups and users in OpenProject can be synchronized. The functionality will not simply create all entries in the LDAP group base nor will it synchronize users that do not exist in OpenProject.
• Group synchronization have to be enabled by an administrator by creating a synchronized LDAP group that ties the OpenProject group to an LDAP entry.
• Only synchronized memberships will be removed from the OpenProject group. If you want to add a user outside your LDAP authentication to an OpenProject group, you can safely do so without the membership being removed.

Configure synchronized LDAP group

In order to get to the LDAP group sync administration pane, expand the LDAP authentication menu item in your administration.

Define group base and key settings

In order for the LDAP groups plugin to locate your group entries, you first need to set the group key to cn (the identifying attribute of the group entries) and group base to ou=groups,ou=example,ou=com as shown in the following screenshot.

LDAP group synchronization settings

Create a synchronized group

To create a new synchronized group, use the button on the top right of the page. There, you will select your LDAP authentication source that contains the group, as well as the existing OpenProject group that members should be synchronized to.

The entry identifier field corresponds to the value of the group key, e.g. groupA for our first exemplary group.

Click on Create to finish the creation of the synchronized group. The LDAP memberships of each user will be synchronized hourly through a cron job on your packaged installation. Changes and output will be logged to /var/log/openproject/cron-hourly.log.

If you want to trigger the synchronization manually you can do so by running the respective rake task directly. In the packaged installation, for instance, this would work like this:

sudo openproject run bundle exec rake ldap_groups:synchronize