What is ForgeRock Identity Management (IDM) and what is its role in the platform?

ForgeRock Identity Management (IDM) is the lifecycle and provisioning engine of the ForgeRock platform. Where AM focuses on authentication and access decisions in real time, IDM manages the full identity lifecycle — creating accounts when a new employee joins, updating attributes when roles change, and deprovisioning access when someone leaves. It evolved from the OpenIDM open-source project and is designed to be embedded in enterprise HR-to-IT provisioning workflows.

IDM's architecture centres on a few key concepts:

• Managed Objects — The internal identity objects IDM maintains in its own repository (typically a relational database or DS). A managed user, managed device, or managed role is a canonical representation that IDM owns and governs.
• System Objects — Representations of objects in external target systems (Active Directory users, Salesforce contacts, etc.), accessed via connectors.
• Connectors (ICF) — The Identity Connector Framework provides adaptors to external systems. ForgeRock ships connectors for LDAP, Active Directory, SQL databases, Salesforce, Google Workspace, ServiceNow, CSV files, and others. Custom connectors can be written in Java using the ICF API.
• Mappings — Define the attribute flow between source and target objects. For example, a mapping from managed user → Active Directory maps userName to sAMAccountName.
• Reconciliation — The process of comparing source and target populations to detect and resolve discrepancies (user exists in source but not target, or vice versa).
• Sync — Real-time event-driven updates pushed to targets when a source object changes.

IDM also handles self-service registration, password reset, and profile management through configurable UI templates backed by REST APIs.

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