BOBJ BI4.2 User List and Group Extraction (via SPA)

julien · January 19, 2021, 3:33am

Hello all,

I want to make a dedicated topic for this little tool that I have developed, coming from this post BOXI UserList & Group Extraction. It’s not a download, but as it can replace a previous tool coming from the downloads I think it deserve it 's own topic

Introduction

I have created a very simple SPA (Single Page Application) powered by React.js that consume BOBJ REST api. It is designed to extract the complete list of users and groups, I have tested it for systems with around 5,000 users.

How to use it

Go to this application:
http://tools.bobj-board.org/

Provide your BOBJ dns (where your REST api is hosted, it is just adding :6405/biprws to generate the API endpoint), your BOBJ user and your BOBJ password (currently it work only using Enterprise authentication)

Then click on Connect. It will call the right endpoint directly from your computer (no BOBJ data is sent over internet), and populate the user and group table below.

Then you can use the extracted data within any tool you want (copy paste to Excel for example).

Motivation ?

I have created by the past a similar tool (BOXI UserList & Group Extraction) based on Microsoft Excel, using VBA to consume BOBJ API. Today I do not have anymore Office on my laptop but still working with BOBJ, and I have some skills in frontend development using React.js. It’s an opportunity to test such application that does not rely on any backend (except your BOBJ REST API)

Questions ?

Let me know in this thread if this tool have helped you, if you have any issue with it. Thanks for your feedback, I will look forward to enhance it !

BOBJ version: The tool have been tested on BI4.2 SP7 and SP8. I think it work starting from BI4.2 SP0.
Tracker: A Google Analytics tracker is installed to let me know how many user have used the tool, and how many fail/success login it generate. The tracker does not not track any BOBJ related information (system, user, password, user or group extracted)
Source Code: Code is available here, under MIT license. Let me know if you re-use this work, I will be happy to share it here !

Versions

Version	Date	Comments
	2021-01-18	Released as open source
1.0	2020-11-28	Initial release. Provide a tool to list users and groups.

Surika · December 14, 2020, 5:46pm

Hi Julien,
i’ve tested your tool, it works fine.
Thanks for sharing it, and Ihope the sorce will be available soon.

Karoly

zidres · January 16, 2021, 8:05pm

Thanks, It worked with my system and I got total: 5,939 items that’s correct. I would love to download it. so that I can run on production server 4.2 SP06.

julien · January 19, 2021, 3:35am

Hi @Surika,

I have released the source here ! I let you dig into the project. I will be happy to review bugs and pull requests !

julien · January 19, 2021, 3:38am

Hi @zidres,

As it’s a web-application how do you want to download it ? I have just released the source on github here, but it’s not like a executable application. You can directly provide the production credential on http://tools.bobj-board.org/ (no bobj data will leave your computer, it’s all working as an offline application). Let me know if it work on your system !

zidres · January 19, 2021, 2:02pm

Thanks, Julien I have downloaded it, The reason to ask you we have IT security on server and thought instead of running web-based I should download and run it from our server myself. I have another question. It is now extracted to all the users I need to select all then copy and paste to excel instead download in Excel I need to format it once copied.

Thanks

julien · January 19, 2021, 7:33pm

Exact I have not managed the extraction output. You must copy/paste. One idea can be to generate a csv output (that can be imported in any tool later).

zidres · January 19, 2021, 8:38pm

Ok, now it is an issue for me. I have 5000+ users and some of them are members of 3 to 4 groups at least and my file is too big when I select all the records page is not responding.

julien · February 1, 2021, 6:15pm

Hum that’s an issue. I will get a look,

rnbanting · March 10, 2021, 11:01am

I tried to use but ended with error:

Request failed with status code 404

I am able to ping the hosts server

julien · March 10, 2021, 1:09pm

What value do you provide in cms.local field ?

rnbanting · March 19, 2021, 10:38am

we have provide the IP only.

julien · March 19, 2021, 1:53pm

Can you test this in a browser:

http://<IP>:6405/biprws/

Does it work ?

If it’s not working do you know if your WACS service is up and serving on port http 6405 ?

Thanks !

tjs · April 15, 2021, 9:01pm

How long should it take? I get the users list quickly, but just spinning for the groups. I see the Everyone group shows up, but still waiting for the others.

julien · April 17, 2021, 11:56am

Hello,

How many users do you have ? Maybe I need to optimize the queries for getting the groups.
Thanks !

tjs · April 18, 2021, 12:24pm

Only around 1,700 users

julien · April 24, 2021, 10:40pm

that’s a pretty small count. Can you check if you have some network issue during the execution via the browser console ? Generally press F12 and you have a Network tab. You can spot issue also in the Console tab.

Thanks for your help !

tjs · April 27, 2021, 8:36pm

I thinks it’s a issue with VPN possible blocking access. Don’t worry about it, is there. Way to stop it from waiting for user groups and just get the user ID’s? I can’t copy user when it is still trying to get the groups.

zidres · October 19, 2021, 3:54pm

Hi Julien,

Did you get a chance to update it? I need to extract more than 5000+ users in an excel sheet.

Thanks