LDAP Directory synchronization not working correctly for user profile elements

Owned by Jona Borishi (External) (Deactivated)
Last updated: Mar 16, 2023 by Judith WinklerVersion comment
2 min read

Problem

The synchronization of LDAP users to Confluence is not working correctly. After the synchronization, users have some of their attributes shown properly but changes/modifications in the LDAP directory did not get synchronized and information is not updated on the user profiles in Confluence.

Description

The issue occurred because the Confluence administrator only tried to synchronize data from the LDAP directory on Administration Console > Users & Security > User Directories > Synchronize.

In this case, the general LDAP synchronization will only handle the synchronization of some standard user fields, such as username, first name, last name, display name, email, password, etc. This is the normal Confluence behavior.

You can check these standard user attributes (and modify LDAP mapping for them) by going to User Directories > Edit your configured LDAP directory > expand User Schema Settings on the Configure LDAP User Directory view. This article: Connecting to an LDAP Directory – User Schema Settings from Atlassian Confluence support portal, explains in detail how the connection to LDAP works and also gives information about the default user attributes that can be synchronized by the standard User Directory synchronization.

On the other hand, every other user profile element that you have activated LDAP mapping for using “User Profiles for Confluence”, will be synchronized only by performing synchronization provided by our app. You can read more on how this synchronization process works in our official documentation page: Synchronization (v 3.0).

Solution

User Directories synchronization works only for some of the standard user fields - as explained above. Every other field can be synchronized using “User Profiles for Confluence” synchronization. To have all the information synchronized, you can start a “Manual Synchronization” :

  1. Go to: Administration Console > Users & Security > User Profile Configuration > Advanced Options

  2. Click “Start Synchronization” button on the “Manual Synchronization” section. It will start a full synchronization.

The full synchronization is a resource-consuming task. It’s recommended you start it outside of business hours!

Remember: You can choose other ways to synchronize user profile elements - as explained on the Synchronization (v 3.3) page.