MEP & Active Directory

[pferris]

Hi There,

 

I've been using ME for a few years and MEP since release. I read the forums when I have time or have a specific question or answer.

 

One thing I haven't seen, is any mention of using MEP (or ME) to automate bulk AD (Active Directory) accounting chores. To me, this sounds like a 'natural' fit. Integrate well with Word or whatever and send out "You need to change your password in the next 5 days or...", "Your account has been created...", etc; style messages.

 

Since late March, I'm the network administrator for a school system. As you might imagine, every year student (and staff) accounts have to be aged accordingly -- Little Johnny is no longer at the Junior High. now he's in High School - so he (and probably 200-300 others!) need to be moved to a different OU. The graduating High School class needs to be deleted (they're out of the system now... free at last!). Other students at other schools will need manual tweaking (Little Suzy just moved in to the school system, Young Bob just moved out). Simple select & delete or drag & drop as the case(s) may be. Ok... to the point today: Has anyone ever used MEP to create / delete / move AD accounts in bulk?

 

In August or so, I will be getting all the student names, their respective school, etc; will come to me from our DBA who will grind it out from PowerSchool (a commercial app that manages a fairly hellacious SQLbase. So I can pretty much leech whatever data I need - in the worst case (or typical one!), I can inhale it all into an Excel sheet. And concatenate the data into a final column and regurgitate that to the DC (Domain Controller). I just didn't want to have to reinvent the wheel, but I've done a lot tougher with MEP.

 

Anyone have any AD / MEP macros they wouldn't mind sharing?

 

Thanks tons,

 

--Pete

 

P.S.: If you're reading this months from now and need an AD util, you might drop me a note!

[Brain Virus]

I have made quite a few that range from resetting pw in bulk, moving them, creating copies of accounts, assigning login scripts and setting home folders.

 

It pretty easy to work with. Some tips for navigation.

 

when you open the profile window for the account and you want to get to another tab (you cant use controls for this in 2003): shift+tab up to highlight the general tab then arrow left or right to cycle through to the proper tab

 

to get to a specific field: alt+(letter) example alt+m on the general tab will jump down to the email field.

 

To make sure you get the right user: Do a pixel check for black on the picture of the little guy to the left of the search results and one space down. Have it pause if it returns a black pixel, this will allow you to select the correct user if you get multiple results

 

the quickest way to highlight the search result is text type arrow left

 

to bring up the right click menu when you have a user highlighted text type <APP>

 

to navigate the move menu have the macro type the first couple letters of the OU you want, then arrow left to drill down, then repeat until you get to the correct OU

 

 

Let me know if you have any questions and i would be more than happy to assist you.