User identity management is the backbone of IT and security. At its core, it's about ensuring the right people have the right access to the right resources. For decades, this has been managed through directory services like Active Directory, LDAP, and more recently, cloud-based solutions like Okta and Azure AD.
For developers and DevOps teams tasked with automating these systems, the interaction has traditionally been defined by four simple letters: CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete). We write scripts to create a user, read their group memberships, update an attribute, or delete an account.
But what if CRUD is no longer enough? In today's complex, hybrid-cloud world, simple atomic operations fall short. Onboarding a new engineer isn't just one create call; it's a multi-step, multi-system workflow. This is where the limitations of traditional identity APIs become clear and a new approach is needed: Agentic Identity Management.
Managing users across multiple directories is anything but simple. An enterprise might use Active Directory for on-prem resources, Azure AD for Microsoft 365, Okta for SSO, and a custom LDAP server for a legacy application.
This fragmentation creates a significant challenge that basic CRUD can't solve:
Agentic identity management, the engine behind directories.do, moves beyond simple, stateless commands. Instead of telling the system how to perform each granular step, you declare the desired outcome.
An "agentic workflow" is an intelligent, automated process that understands the entire business context of an identity operation. You make a single, high-level API call, and an autonomous agent handles the rest.
Imagine turning a 100-line Python script for user provisioning into a clean, declarative API call. That’s the power of this approach.
import { directories } from 'sdk.do';
// Create a new user across all your connected directories
const newUser = await directories.users.create({
firstName: 'Jane',
lastName: 'Doe',
email: 'jane.doe@example.com',
groups: ['engineers', 'product-team'],
attributes: {
employeeId: 'E12345',
costCenter: 'CC-987'
}
});
console.log(newUser);
// { id: 'usr_abc123...', status: 'provisioned' }
In this example, you aren't manually connecting to Active Directory, then Okta, then LDAP. You are making one request to the directories.do universal API. Our platform dispatches an agent that:
This is true Business-as-Code for your identity infrastructure.
The agentic model excels at automating the entire user lifecycle, transforming complex identity management tasks into simple, auditable workflows.
By abstracting away the underlying complexity, directories.do allows you to focus on your business logic, not on the quirks of a specific LDAP implementation or the pagination of a REST API.
Q: What directory services does directories.do support?
A: Our platform is designed for universal compatibility. It can connect to any standard directory service, including Microsoft Active Directory, Azure AD, LDAP, Okta, Google Workspace, and more, providing a unified API layer on top.
Q: How does directories.do handle security and credentials?
A: Security is paramount. directories.do securely stores encrypted credentials and uses them to execute agentic workflows on your behalf. All API traffic is encrypted, and access is controlled via API keys, ensuring your identity infrastructure remains protected.
Q: Can I perform complex operations like managing group-based permissions?
A: Yes. The directories.do API abstracts away the complexity of underlying services. You can easily add or remove users from groups, manage group memberships, and implement role-based access control (RBAC) with simple API calls.
Q: Is this just for user provisioning?
A: No, directories.do covers the full identity lifecycle. Beyond provisioning, you can automate de-provisioning, access reviews, attribute updates, and password resets, all through our Business-as-Code platform.
Stop wrestling with fragmented APIs and brittle scripts. It's time to move beyond CRUD and embrace an intelligent, automated approach to identity and access management. With directories.do, you get a single, universal API that turns your most complex identity operations into simple, powerful, and secure agentic workflows.
Explore the Universal API at directories.do and see how you can streamline user management today.