The procedure for handling certificate enrollment requests is as follows:
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View the list of pending requests for the CM (refer to Section 4.2, “Listing Certificate Requests”).
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Select a request from the list (refer to Section 4.2.1, “Selecting a Request”).
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Process the request (refer to Section 4.2.2, “Searching Requests” and Section 4.3, “Approving Requests”).
Processing a certificate request for a certificate allows one of several actions:
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Approve the request. A request can be approved manually by an agent or automatically by the certificate profile if the request has been authenticated and if the system has been configured to allow automatic enrollment. After a request has been approved, the Certificate System issues the requested certificate. The end user can be automatically notified that the certificate was issued.
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Reject the request. A certificate request can be rejected manually or automatically by the certificate profile if the request does not conform to the profile's defaults and constraints. If automatic notification is configured, a notification is automatically sent to the requester when the certificate request is rejected.
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Cancel the request. A request can be canceled manually, but requests can never be canceled automatically. Users do not receive automatic notification of canceled requests. Cancellation can be useful if the user has left the company since submitting the request or if the user has already been contacted about a problem with the certificate request and, therefore, does not need notified.
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Update the request. A pending certificate request can be updated by changing some of its values, such as the subject name. The different default values associated with a certificate profile changed by the agent only results in the certificate request values being changed but does not change its state.
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Validate the request. A request that uses a certificate profile can be checked, or validated, to see if the request complies with the defaults and constraints set by the certificate profile. This action only checks the request but does not submit or edit the request.
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Assign the request. A certificate request can be manually assigned by the agent processing the request to himself. Requests cannot be assigned to another agent.
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Unassign the request. A request can be removed from an agent's queue if necessary, such as when requests are assigned to an agent who has since left the company.
Approving, canceling, and rejecting certificate requests all alter the request status. Assigning, unassigning, update, and validating certificate requests do not alter the request status. If the form is closed without taking one of these actions, the request remains in the queue with the same status.
Figure 4.1, “Certificate Request Management Process” illustrates the process for handling requests and the different types of status for a request.
