LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is essentially a standard that allows systems to talk to a corporate database or "Directory" of network users. The most common Directories are
* Microsoft "Active Directory"
* Novell "eDirectory"
A Directory is usually where your credentials are checked when log in to the office network in many companies. However, a Directory can also store a lot of personal information about User's such as
* First Name
* Last Name
* Email
* Manager's User Name
* Manager's Email
* can also accept custom fields
A form will often need to contain information about a person, for example an employee requesting vacation will fill in a form that requires his own details as well as those of his manager, who may need to approve his request. A Directory will often store this information so the Form can look up the person's details and auto-populate form fields.
When a User is logged in to a network, they are "authenticated". PerfectForms is able to detect this "Authenticated User ID" inside the form. This allows the form designer to instruct the form, as soon as it loads, to take this User ID and then ask the Directory (through the LDAP interface as it happens) to get information about that User. This returned information can then be put into form fields (visible, hidden or read-only) which can be used for display or routing purposes
