Can I use multiple direct join rules on more than one attribute in MIIS

Can I use multiple direct join rules on more than one attribute in MIIS to improve my rate of Joins on existing accounts?

This is an excellent question and idea and yes MIIS is capable of matching / joining on more than one attribute. This being said it must be remembered that "direct" join rules are evaluated in order. If the first join rule matches a connector is created and no other join rules are considered. If the first join rule is not matched the next one is considered and so on. Join rules do not act as an "AND" statement. In other words the 1^st and 2^nd join rules do not collectively decide whether an object is joined but instead are considered in order of precedence. Thus it is always best practice to set your most unique join rules first and move down to rules which are more likely to find a match on more than one object.

Now with that said there is the option of what is known as a Join rules extension in which case we can have the ability to say through a program extension that both attributes are required to match before the join can take place. This is the AND statement and requires the use of code. In this instance the join rules extension could say if the employeeID is correct and the telephoneNumber / WORK_PHONE is correct then and only then allow the join to take place. This would then prevent us from joining an employee in AD for which the employeeID and telephoneNumber did not match the employeeID and say WORK_PHONE of the respective Metaverse object with the same attributes. This would for instance prevent two AD objects which may have wrongfully been assigned the same employeeID to match two of the same Metaverse objects with a matching unique employeeID of the same number.

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What happens if multiple attributes are presented to the object to join on in the Metaverse based on direct join? For our example we will consider the case of AD being the target and Peoplesoft being the authoritative source. Lets consider that we want to match on telephoneNumber and employeeID with employeeID being the first join rule and telephoneNumber being the second join rule using direct join rules.

More than one object in the Metaverse with the same employeeID

With this idea being that "more than one metaverse objects are acceptable", if two objects in the metaverse coming from PeopleSoft had the exact same employeeID we would match on neither and MIIS would throw an error.

1. In this scenario it would see that it matched on two metaverse objects and refuse to join either.
2. This is a case based on the employeeID not being unique in PeopleSoft and thus the metaverse that should never occur anyway as the employeeID is always unique.
3. If the employeeID were not found it would then proceed in this example to match on telephoneNumber to see if that was a good match, if it matched it would join the object

More than one object in AD having the same employeeID and matching on more than one object in the metaverse results in ambiguous attribute flow meaning two or more objects in the target connector space match on the same employeeID in the metaverse and attempt to Join.

This scenario results in another issue in that based on to object being willing to join the first object on the same attribute an error is thrown and no further join rules are considered.