Harnessing the Power of Okta’s Universal Directory and Extensibility Language to Connect and Transform Data Across Multiple Identity Sources

In conversations with customers across the Middle East, I’ve noticed a common challenge: managing and synchronising user identities across numerous systems without introducing additional complexity. In these discussions, Okta’s Universal Directory (UD) and, notably, its Expression Language have proven to be game-changing.

Okta’s Expression Language often flies under the radar, yet it’s one of the most powerful features within the platform. With just a single line of code, it enables organisations to transform, normalise, and control identity data precisely as needed. Many organisations aren’t aware of just how flexible and potent this tool is—particularly in dynamic environments where attributes might come from various sources, formats, and standards. With the right expressions, we can adapt, clean, and map this data to meet specific regional and business needs seamlessly.

In Middle Eastern organisations, where business agility and adherence to security standards are paramount, this level of control allows for faster integration and a smoother user experience across the board. I’m excited to share more about how Okta’s Universal Directory, with the power of Expression Language, can solve real business challenges—quickly, efficiently, and with minimal coding.

In today’s complex IT landscape, organisations use multiple applications, identity sources, and directories to manage user data. Managing these disparate systems effectively—while ensuring accurate, synchronised identity data—can become a massive undertaking. Okta’s Universal Directory (UD) offers a streamlined solution for centralising identity data from multiple sources, making it easier for organisations to manage access, apply security policies, and ensure a consistent experience for users across applications.

This article explores how Okta’s Universal Directory connects to multiple identity sources and utilises Okta’s Expression Language for data transformation, creating a powerful hub for user identity management across complex environments. We’ll cover the following:

1. Overview of Okta’s Universal Directory and its capabilities

2. Connection methods for integrating multiple identity sources

3. Data transformation using Okta’s Expression Language, with examples

1. Overview of Okta’s Universal Directory and its Capabilities

Okta’s Universal Directory serves as a highly flexible repository for storing, managing, and mapping user data across the enterprise. Universal Directory is particularly powerful in scenarios where a company relies on multiple sources of identity, such as Active Directory (AD), LDAP, HR systems, and external identity providers. This flexibility enables organisations to create a single view of their users, regardless of where the data originates.

Some key features include:

? Centralised User Profile Management: UD aggregates identity data into a consolidated Okta user profile, creating a single, consistent record for each user.

? Schema Flexibility: The directory schema is highly customisable, allowing organisations to add custom attributes that suit their unique requirements.

? Mappings and Transformations: UD supports attribute mappings between different directories and applications. By leveraging Okta’s Expression Language, organisations can manipulate and transform identity data on-the-fly to meet integration requirements.

? Real-time Syncing: Changes made in connected sources, like AD or an HR system, are synchronised to UD in real-time, ensuring data consistency and minimising lag between systems.

2. Connection Methods for Integrating Multiple Identity Sources

To leverage Okta’s Universal Directory effectively, it’s essential to establish robust integrations with various identity sources. Okta supports several methods for connecting identity sources to Universal Directory:

Active Directory (AD) and LDAP Integration

Okta offers built-in connectors for AD and LDAP, allowing seamless integration between these directories and Universal Directory. With AD, Okta uses an agent-based approach, where lightweight agents installed on AD servers sync data with Okta’s UD. The sync is bi-directional, allowing changes in Okta (such as attribute updates) to propagate back to AD if necessary.

HR Systems Integration

Integrating with HR systems is common in organisations that treat HR as the “source of truth” for user data. Okta has connectors for popular HR systems like Workday, allowing UD to synchronise employee data as users are onboarded, modified, or off-boarded. This integration ensures that updates to roles, titles, and other key attributes reflect in real-time across applications.

Custom Identity Sources via API or SCIM

For non-standard identity sources or custom applications, Okta offers API and SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) endpoints. SCIM is an industry standard for identity data interchange and is commonly used to connect external SaaS applications with Okta. If the source system supports SCIM, Okta can pull user information from it directly into UD.

External Identity Providers (IdPs)

Many organisations use Okta in conjunction with other IdPs, such as Azure AD, to facilitate single sign-on (SSO) across their application landscape. In such cases, Okta can integrate with the external IdP using SAML or OIDC protocols to pull user profile data.

3. Data Transformation Using Okta’s Expression Language

Connecting various identity sources is only the beginning; effective data management often requires transforming that data to meet application requirements. Okta’s Expression Language—an extensible syntax based on JavaScript—allows administrators to manipulate user data directly within UD mappings. With Expression Language, admins can perform data transformations, conditionally map attributes, and enrich user profiles before provisioning them to downstream applications.

Examples of Data Transformation with Okta Expression Language

Let’s explore some practical examples of how Okta’s Expression Language can be used to transform identity data in real-time.

Example 1: Conditional Attribute Mapping Based on Role

Suppose an organisation wants to assign different email domains to users based on their department. Employees in the Sales department should have an email with the sales.company.com domain, while others use company.com. We can accomplish this using the following Expression Language statement in a mapping rule:

user.email == 'Sales' ? user.firstName + '.' + user.lastName + '@sales.company.com' : user.firstName + '.' + user.lastName + '@company.com'

Here’s how this works:

? If the department attribute for the user is “Sales,” the expression constructs an email address with the sales.company.com domain.

? For other users, it defaults to the company.com domain.

This transformation ensures that email addresses adhere to departmental policies without manual intervention.

Example 2: Data Normalisation for Attribute Formatting

In cases where data from different sources have inconsistent formats, Okta’s Expression Language can be used to standardise the data format. For instance, if user phone numbers arrive in different formats (e.g., 123-456-7890, (123) 456-7890, 123.456.7890), we can normalise them to a consistent format like 1234567890.

user.phoneNumber.replace(/[^0-9]/g, "")

This expression:

? Removes all non-numeric characters, yielding a clean, numeric-only phone number string.

? Ensures phone numbers are consistently formatted across different applications.

Example 3: Attribute Transformation for Case Conversion

Suppose an organisation wants all usernames to be lowercase, but user data from certain sources is sometimes uppercase or mixed case. We can force usernames to lowercase using a simple Expression Language statement:

user.login.toLowerCase()

This transformation:

? Converts any variation in user.login to lowercase, ensuring uniformity across applications that use the login attribute.

Example 4: Combining Attributes for Custom User Identifier

Sometimes, a unique identifier is required that combines multiple attributes, such as employee ID and department. This can be useful for tracking purposes or for creating a globally unique username across different applications.

user.employeeID + '-' + user.department

In this case:

? The expression concatenates the employeeID and department attributes, separated by a hyphen, to create a unique identifier that is easy to parse and consistent across systems.

Example 5: Date Manipulation for Contract End Dates

An organisation might want to set user deactivation dates based on a contract end date stored in an external system. Using Okta’s Expression Language, we can manipulate date values directly within UD:

user.contractEndDate ? new Date(user.contractEndDate).toISOString() : ''

This expression:

? Checks if contractEndDate exists. If so, it converts it to ISO format for easy integration with downstream applications.

? Ensures a consistent date format, which simplifies attribute mapping to applications requiring a specific date structure.

Okta’s Universal Directory, combined with the power of its Expression Language, enables organisations to unify, manage, and transform identity data from multiple sources in real-time. By connecting disparate identity sources like AD, LDAP, HR systems, and custom APIs, Okta’s UD serves as a central repository that ensures consistency and simplifies identity management.

The Expression Language further enhances this capability by allowing admins to define complex, real-time transformations that standardise and customise data to meet the diverse requirements of downstream applications. From conditional mappings to data normalisation and custom attributes, Okta’s extensibility opens the door to flexible, powerful identity management that can adapt to any organisation’s unique demands.

In today’s evolving identity landscape, where agility, security, and user experience are paramount, Okta’s Universal Directory and Expression Language provide an invaluable toolkit for achieving effective, secure identity management across complex enterprise environments.