The basic, underlying structure of MCommunity is now in place, including the Identity Vault and the data feeds connecting the primary authoritative data souces.
The new directory itself is not yet visible to the University community.
Fall 2008
The Sponsor System will be available to sponsorship administrators and to ITCS Accounts Office staff members. They will be able to use it to create online identities, including uniqnames, for sponsored affiliates.
Early 2009
Programmatic access to the Sponsor System will allow units to begin to transition their applications that interact with uniqname now to working with MCommunity. This access will likely be provided via a consumable web service. Command-line access will also be provided.
The new MCommunity online directory will be made available. It will run in parallel with the interface to the current U-M Online Directory for a period of time to allow for a smooth transition. For most members of the U-M community, this will be the visible debut of MCommunity.
There will be changes in how people look up people and group entries, how they modify their own entries, and how they create and manage groups. There will also be changes in what information is available to the general public and to members of the University community.
Uniqname self-registration for sponsored affiliates will be included in the Sponsor System. This will allow sponsored individuals to select a uniqname and password themselves via a web interface. This will be similar to the uniqname self-registration process already available to new staff, new Ann Arbor students, and alumni.
Minor changes to the uniqname self-registration process for staff and students may be required.
The U-M Online Directory will remain available behind the scenes for some time so that departments that need access to it can continue to use it while they transition their systems to access MCommunity instead.
There will be changes to the system underlying uniqname self-registration for students, staff, and alumni. However, changes to the web pages people use for this process will likely be minimal.
ITCS will begin to use MCommunity to provision its Basic Computing Package, as well as some other campus services. After that, MCommunity will offer a way for departments to do their own service provisioning through MCommunity.
