Browse to the authentication administration page, http://yourserver/acs-admin/auth/ and choose an authority for batch sync.

Set Batch sync enabled to Yes. Set GetDocument Implementation to HTTP GET. Set ProcessDocument Implementation to IMS Enterprise 1.1. These settings will cause OpenACS to attempt to retrieve via HTTP a list of users in XML format from a location we will specify in a few steps.

Click OK.

On the next page, click Configure on the GetDocument Implementation line.

Enter either or both the IncrementalURL and SnapshotURL. These are the URLs which the external Authority will supply with XML files in IMS Enterprise 1.1 format.

Configure your Authority (RADIUS server, etc) to supply XML files to the URLs IncrementalURL and SnapshotURL. A typical set of incremental file record looks like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<enterprise>
  <properties>
    <datasource>FOO</datasource>
    <target>dotLRN</target>
    <type>DB Increment</type>
    <datetime>28-oct-2003#16:06:02</datetime>
  </properties>
  <person recstatus = "1">
    <sourcedid>
      <source>FOO</source>
      <id>karlf</id>
    </sourcedid>
    <name>
      <n>
        <given>Karl</given>
        <family>Fritz</family>
        <prefix></prefix>
      </n>
    </name>
    <email>karlf@example.net</email>
  </person>
  <person recstatus = "2">    <!--modified person-->
    ...
  </person>
  <person recstatus = "3">    <!--deleted person-->
  <sourcedid>
    <id>LL1</id>      <!--only requires username-->
  </sourcedid>
  </person>
</enterprise>

A snapshot file is similar but doesn't have recstatus, since it's not a delta but a list of valid records. See the larger example in the design document for more details.

(More information: the section called “IMS Sync driver design”, The IMS 1.1 spec)