ITS Documentation
An Overview of the MCommunity Directory Via the Web
R1462 • July 2009

This document provides a preview of the new MCommunity Directory, which is currently under development.

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What Is the MCommunity Directory?

The MCommunity Directory is a new online directory, currently under development, that will be made available via the web. It will contain entries with contact information and more for all members of the U-M community, as well as group entries.

The MCommunity Directory will become the definitive directory for the university. It is part of a larger MCommunity system that will be used for identity management, including uniqname management, and to automate the way computing services and resources are provided. It will replace the U-M Online Directory.

To meet the needs of U-M information technology staff, the U-M Online Directory will remain accessible via LDAP for some time after the MCommunity Directory is released. Programmatic access (via LDAP and Web Services) to the MCommunity Directory will be provided by the new MCommunity LDAP Tree. After a transition period, programmatic access to the U-M Online Directory will be discontinued.

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Finding People

You'll search the MCommunity Directory much the same way you search the U-M Online Directory. You'll type in a name or uniqname to find a person's entry, or you'll use the Advanced Search option to search by other criteria.

Screen shot of MCommunity search box.

It will be easier for you to find faculty and staff in MCommunity than in the U-M Online Directory because names, titles, affiliations, and business addresses and phone numbers will be displayed in the directory for all employees.

Also, you'll be able to trust that the information you see in people's entries is as up-to-date as possible. Official university information, such as employee title and business phone number, will come from official university data sources. People will be able to enter additional contact information and indicate how they prefer to be contacted.

You may see more information about some people in the directory if you log in (that is, when you authenticate using Weblogin/cosign). People have the option to display information that they enter to everyone or to logged in users only.

Only those with a current affiliation with the university—and therefore a current source of up-to-date data—will be included in the directory. Entries for former employees and others no longer affiliated with U-M will be removed after a specified grace period. Entries in that grace period will be identified in some way.

There will be more people in the MCommunity Directory than in the U-M Online Directory. The MCommunity Directory will include faculty, staff, and Ann Arbor students, as does the current directory. It will also include all living alumni (not just those with uniqnames), Dearborn students, and Flint students.

Screen shot of MCommunity person entry.
View larger version.

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Finding Groups

You'll be able to search the MCommunity Directory by group name to find groups, just as you do with the U-M Online Directory. Group entries will be easier to read. You'll be able to look at general information about the group, a list of group members, and settings for the group by clicking different tabs in the group's directory entry.

Screen shot of MCommunity group entry: general.
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Screen shot of MCommunity group entry: members.
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Your Entry: What You Can Change Where

You will notice a number of differences in what information you can change and where you can change it.

In the MCommunity Directory, you will not be able to change information that comes from an official university source (you'll need to change it at the source). The official university information sources for the directory are

For information that cannot be changed in MCommunity, there will be clear instructions telling you where you can change that information. For example, faculty and staff, as well as Ann Arbor students, can change their addresses using Wolverine Access. MCommunity will be updated live when information is updated in Wolverine Access (M-Pathways) and the Sponsor System. It is updated nightly from the Dearborn system and will likely be updated nightly from the Flint and alumni systems as well.

In the MCommunity Directory, you will be able to provide additional contact information if you prefer to be contacted at a phone number or address different from the one(s) listed in the university's official data sources.

Screen shot of adding contact information to MCommunity.
View larger version.

You will not be able to set your MCommunity entry to prevent updates from the university's central systems (official data sources). In other words, the "Prevent Batch Updates" option that is available in the U-M Online Directory will not be available in MCommunity. People who have "Prevent Batch Updates" turned on for their U-M Online Directory entry will be notified via e-mail (if they have an e-mail forwarding address in their directory entry) about this change before MCommunity goes live.

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Your Entry: Choosing What to Display (Privacy)

Home Addresses Will Be Hidden
In the U-M Online Directory, your home address(es) is displayed unless you take action to hide it. The reverse will be true in MCommunity. Your home address(es) will be hidden unless you choose to show it.
U-M Employees Can't Hide Business Contact Information
Many university units found it difficult to conduct university business when work-related contact information was not available in the U-M Online Directory. In response, the MCommunity Governance Board decided that, because the university is a public institution, employee work-related contact information should be displayed in the new MCommunity Directory. Staff members who do not want their actual office location or phone listed may request, through their unit's Human Resources office, that a central departmental address and/or phone number be listed for them instead.
No More Private Entries
In the U-M Online Directory, people can mark their own entry as private to hide everything except their uniqname. This option will not be available in the new MCommunity Directory. MCommunity will automatically hide personal contact information, however, which was automatically published in the U-M Online Directory. People who have private entries in the U-M Online Directory will be notified via e-mail (if they have an e-mail forwarding address in their directory entry), before the MCommunity Directory is released, that they will not have this option in the new directory. The notification will describe the privacy options they do have available to them.
More Privacy Levels
In place of the all-or-nothing approach of entries being public or private in their entirety, MCommunity will offer varying levels of privacy for individual items in your entry. For some items, such as your home contact information, you will be able to select whether to make it visible to the public, visible to members of the U-M community (that is, logged-in users), or hidden from everyone except you.
Minimum Public Information
This is the information that will be public in your MCommunity entry. You will not be able to hide this information yourself using MCommunity; you may, however, request that it be hidden by contacting the appropriate university office (see Your privacy options below). You may also choose to publish additional information if you wish.

What's Public for Students

  • Name(s)
  • Uniqname
  • E-mail address ("uniqname@umich.edu" Only listed if a mail forwarding address has been entered)
  • Title ("Student")
  • Affiliation (School/College name from Wolverine Access/M-Pathways, Dearborn, or Flint)
  • Campus (Ann Arbor, Dearborn, or Flint)

What's Public for Faculty and Staff

  • Name(s)
  • Uniqname
  • E-mail address ("uniqname@umich.edu" Only listed if a mail forwarding address has been entered)
  • Title (long/working title from Wolverine Access/M-Pathways)
  • Affiliation (Wolverine Access/M-Pathways department name(s))
  • Business phone
  • Business address
  • Campus (Ann Arbor, Dearborn, or Flint)

For retirees, the affiliation is listed as "Retiree," and the information listed for business phone, business address, and title is removed."

What's Public for Alumni

  • Name(s)
  • Uniqname
  • E-mail address ("uniqname@umich.edu" Only listed if a mail forwarding address has been entered)
  • Affiliation ("Alumni")

What's Public for Sponsored Individuals

  • Name(s)
  • Uniqname
  • E-mail address ("uniqname@umich.edu" Only listed if a mail forwarding address has been entered)
  • Affiliation ("Sponsored")
  • Campus (Ann Arbor, Dearborn, or Flint)
Your Privacy Options
These are the options available to you, in addition to the display options in MCommunity, for protecting the privacy of directory information about you:

Student Privacy Options

  • Non-Disclosure of Information Request. Ann Arbor students may fill out a Non-Disclosure of Information Request at an Office of the Registrar Student Services Site to invoke FERPA protection and have all their directory information except their uniqname withheld from the directory. Students on the Flint or Dearborn campuses should contact the Registrar's Office for their campus. Please note that requesting non-disclosure restricts the university from providing information to outside parties in most circumstances—for example, requests for enrollment certification for health insurance, credit requests, and so on, as well as requests for degree certification from prospective employers. You should carefully consider the consequences of requesting non-disclosure before making the decision to do so. For more information, see U-M Student Rights and Records (Registrar's Office).

Faculty and Staff Privacy Options

  • Do Not Publish. This option, available via Wolverine Access, allows you to request that your home address(es) not be published in the U-M printed faculty and staff directory and in the U-M Online Directory. It does not affect MCommunity, because home addresses are not displayed in the MCommunity unless you choose to display them. (In Wolverine Access, look under Employee Business for the section with your addresses.)

  • Using a General Departmental Address. In the MCommunity Directory, you must have a work address and phone number listed. However, if you prefer that your actual location not be listed, you can ask your department's Human Resources office to submit a departmental office address and/or phone number for you instead.

  • Full Privacy. If, for reasons of personal safety, you need all contact information—including your U-M work contact information—hidden, you may submit a written request to the Director of Human Resources. You can work with your departmental Human Resources office to get the request submitted.

Alumni Privacy Options

  • Keep Out of the Directory. Alumni can request that they not be included in the university directory (both the U-M Online Directory and the MCommunity Directory) by requesting this from the Office of University Development (OUD).

Sponsored Individuals Privacy Options

  • Sponsored people who have no other affiliation with the university can contact their sponsoring department to request that information about them not appear in the MCommunity Directory. The sponsoring authority or sponsorship administrator for their department can then contact the ITS Accounts Office to make the request. The Accounts Office needs the approval of the sponsoring department to withhold the information from the directory.

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Managing Your Groups

In MCommunity, the process for creating a group will be broken up into steps, and there will be clear explanations of the options available to you for your group.

Screen shot of the first step of creating a group.
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Screen shot of managing group settings.
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How People Get Into MCommunity

People will get an entry in the MCommunity Directory when they become a member of the U-M community—and are therefore included in one of the authoritative information sources for the directory. Faculty and staff become full members of the community when information about them is entered into M-Pathways during the hiring process (they can access this information via Wolverine Access). Students will get MCommunity entries when they matriculate (that is, they pay their enrollment deposit or otherwise indicate their intention to enroll). Sponsored people get an entry when a sponsorship administrator enters information about them in the MCommunity Sponsor System.

Many people have multiple relationships with the university, and data about them comes from multiple official sources. Each person will have only one entry that consolidates the available information.

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How People Get Out of MCommunity

People will lose their MCommunity Directory entry when all their relationships with the university end. The U-M Online Directory does not have automated methods for removing obsolete entries; removal is done manually and only on request. In MCommunity, every entry will have an automated method for removal. Only entries with a source of regularly maintained data will remain in the directory.

Faculty and staff entries will be removed, after a grace period, when faculty and staff leave the university and their appointment is terminated. When a person's entry is removed from the MCommunity Directory, that person's uniqname and UMICH Kerberos password will stop working. Terminated faculty and staff will need to be able to log in to Wolverine Access to retrieve their W-2 forms through April 15 of the year after they leave, so the grace period will be long enough to accommodate this. Faculty and staff who retire will remain in the directory until their death.

Students will transition from one authoritative information source (Wolverine Access/M-Pathways, Dearborn Banner System, or Flint Banner System) to another (Data Alumni Constituent database) when they graduate and become alumni. They will remain in the directory until their death. Work is underway to find a regularly updated data source for students who do not graduate so that they can maintain their directory entries. These students are also considered alumni.

Entries for sponsored individuals are created with an expiration date. The sponsoring department can renew sponsorships as needed. When a sponsorship expires, the sponsored person's entry is removed from the directory and the uniqname and UMICH Kerberos password stop working (if that person has no other sponsorships or relationships to the university).

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Setting Policy for MCommunity

Back in 2003, the groundwork for the MCommunity Project was done by a group of information technology professionals from across the university. Focus groups were held with various campus constituencies to get their input regarding how the directory should work, and an MCommunity Governance Board, with members representing U-M units and campuses, was formed to set policies regarding data access and use for the new directory and identity management system.

The Governance Board outlined a number of directory policies in its 2006 recommendations. The MCommunity Governance Board continues to meet regularly to refine and inform MCommunity policies as the project continues its phased implementation. The board set new policies regarding appropriate information privacy and which information to allow directory users to change in their own entries.

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Additional Resources

See the MCommunity Project website.

Visit ITS's Information System to obtain ITS computer documentation and other resources. A list of relevant documents follows:

ITS's Online Help Desk provides a variety of computing help resources.

If you have questions about MCommunity, send them to the MCommunity Leads.

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