Troubleshooting "To passes"

Now on to a different troubleshooting tip.

Sometimes when executing a "To Pass" you'll have an error in writing to that destination be it a database or a directory service.  When writing to a database, you might encounter an error saying something like "the table cannot be created" or the dreaded LDAP 49, "Unwilling to perform"

Basically, what's going on here is that there's a problem writing to the database or the directory service, so you should check a couple of basic things:

1. Is the data format in the destination actually supported? In regards to a database, just because the destination grid says tinyint, this does not mean your Oracle database back end supports it (or smallint on the Microsoft SQL side for that matter)  Always double check this first.

2. Try disabling all of the destination attributes except for the first one and run the task again.  If it works, enable the second destination attribute and keep on with it, leaving attributes that work enabled and ones that don't work disabled. Don't forget that the first line in the destination grid refers to an key, so if this isn't working, make sure that the value must be unique and properly formatted for your destination in terms of type and format.

You can then look back at the disabled attributes and see what works and what does not.  More likely than not there's a formatting issue going on or something in an attached script. When working with Directory Services in a "To LDAP" pass, I've also found it helpful to change the output type to LDIF as shown below.

After this is done the results of the pass will be sent to a text file, which is sometimes easier to review, just don't forget to change it back when you're done!

Good luck and  feel free to post your own favorite troubleshooting tips as comments!!