Active Directory mappings - user's "manager" field

Hi,

does somebody know how is it possible to populate the Manager of an user? the manager is not a single attribute but it is a user type business object (with multiple attributes).

Moreover, in AD the Manager field is populated with a complex syntax, like CN=NAME(SOMETHING),OU=Foo,OU=FOO,OU=FOO,OU=FOO,DC=foo , so i don't know how to handle it, because I need to be populated in order to send him emails or to assign tickets. The user unique key is the SamAccountName (so basically I need to extract from that string the samaccountname, as far as I know...).

Any help?

Thanks