In Accelerator you can define as many resources and services as you want. These can then be filtered to the users of the portal in a granular matter.
These resources have some standard configuration that is shared for all resources and services. This include things as approval, price, url etc. An example below is for “Request Canadian Users”:
Each product can then also be configured with additional product questions.
The Concept of Product Questions & tools
In Accelerator you can create advanced questions that you map into your “services”. These questions will then be visible when the person using the portal loads this “service”. There are many different types of questions available and we are looking to create even more support for this going forward. Below is an example of what it looks like when you create a new Question:
You can then link into the questions to advanced validators as the once below for Active Directory OU Placement:
In the service you then tie questions to specific values etc. You can also do advanced settings and auto generate values, select if they are visible, read only etc like below: 
Advanced UserID Generation – Accelerated version!
So in this example we want to create a user name that is Unique and has a prefix for DK after the login name. So the name should be like this:
<3 first characters of first name><3 first characters of last name><Prefix><SerialNumber>
An Example:
AND HAM DK 000003
Simple huh? Bacardi and coke! Let’s do it!
First we need a placeholder for our auto generated user ID:
In the final request below you can see the information of the items configured above. The UserID is read only and has been auto generated out of the first three characters of first and last name. Then another serial number has been added to the ID in order to make it unique for a Danish user. The red square show the auto generated name. The green box is showing where we can runt command line tools and powershell tasks to automate things against the item as well.
We now have an auto generated UserID using product question. So how is this done?
Fist we need two product questions of Active Directory type without attribute key set. Once called CollectSerial to create the serial number and one called CollectUserID for the 3+3 characters of the username. So the first one we call “CollectSerial” and it looks like below:
Second one is called “CollectUserID” and looks the same:
Then we need three generators, one to create the auto generated serial number into the string above. The second one will take the 3 + 3 characters and put it into the “CollectUserID” string above. The third one will then merge the two strings from both questions above into the userid field.
Let’s start with the first one, the serial number generator. Let’s call it “ComputerNamer” and give it a prefix of “DK”. The name of the list can be anything and is used as the unique identifier for this list. The padding option means that it should be 6 numbers long and will be padded by zeroes.
Leave the start number blank and it will start at 000001. Input parameters can be used to control when we want to trigger the generator at different times. Serial number generator: Done!
Let’s do the 3+3 Generator, below you can see that the generator is a type “Pattern” and has two input parameters, first name and last name. Then the syntax in the Configuration Properties below makes it possible to take 3+3 of the first characters of first name and last name.
The last generator will then add the serial number to the 3+3 characters into a single userid. We do that using a typical pattern with two inputs.
Alright, now we are ready to put it all into the resource, open up your favorite user template and edit the product questions. First we add in the product questions, both “CollectUserID” as well as “CollectSerial”. Then we also add the default “UserID” one, since that is the one we want to set. Then configure the “CollectUserID” to use a generator, and link the two input parameters with the input data on the screen.
Second we add the “CollectSerial”, and select the generator called “ComputerNamer”. This is the one that creates the serial number.
Last, we add the generator to combine the two values in the third generator that we created. This one will then take input from our two text fields and combine them into a single username.
Save the changes! J If you want to make it pretty, go back and select “Visible:None” on the questions above to ensure that your users won’t be confused with weird fields.
When you then go into the portal and request a new user it will then be automatically populated with our amazing new name when you fill in First Name and Last Name. Magic!
Advanced user deployment – Accelerated! J