Central user management involves using a single location to store and manage information about users of webMethods products. You can use Integration Server Administrator to grant users in a central directory access to Integration Server functionality and services. For example, you can assign a My webMethods Server role or group to an ACL.

If a user will access Integration Server or Trading Networks through My webMethods interfaces, create the users in My webMethods Server and then use Integration Server Administrator to give them access to the necessary areas. If such users are already defined in an external directory such as LDAP, you can configure My webMethods Server to work with the external directory. When configured this way, authentication and authorization requests are still made by the Integration Server; however, the server creates the connection to the external directory using the directory settings defined by the My webMethods Server database.

Users defined in a central location, such as the My webMethods Server user directory, are sometimes referred to as central users. The ability to use a central user directory for authentication is provided by the common directory services that are part of My webMethods Server.