Enhancing Active Directory Efficiency: Essentia Health's Journey with ADManager Plus

Business challenges

• Active Directory Cleanup: Essentia Health had numerous legacy items in their Active Directory, which consumed valuable resources and increased the complexity of the system.
• Efficient Reporting: The hospital required a more efficient way to pull data from the Active Directory, which the previous method failed to provide.
• Streamlined Onboarding: The manual onboarding of new users was cumbersome and time-consuming, leading to operational delays.
• Expired Accounts Management: Managing stale and expired accounts efficiently to ensure system security and optimal performance.
• Future Scalability: As the healthcare facility grew, the need for additional features like workflows became evident for future-proofing the system.

The Problem

At the heart of the challenge was the congested state of Essentia Health's Active Directory. With numerous legacy items lingering in the system, the overall efficiency of the directory was compromised. Jerrod Lindberg, the IT Admin at Essentia Health, expressed, "Our basic requirement was to clean up our active directory... because we have a lot of legacy items in there that need to be removed to free up some space."

Additionally, identifying stale and expired accounts became tedious, posing potential security risks. The traditional methods employed for pulling data were not only time-consuming but also lacked in precision. Essentia Health was also on the lookout for other capabilities such as advanced reporting and efficient workflows.

The outcome

Upon integrating ADManager Plus into their systems, Essentia Health observed remarkable improvements. The tool's capability to generate detailed reports played a crucial role in identifying stale accounts, allowing the IT team to cleanse the directory efficiently. Lindberg noted, "It shows us different reports... to see those different stale accounts, expired accounts that no longer are being used, and then we can review those and kind of purge them out of the system."

Moreover, the overall experience with ADManager Plus emerged as superior in comparison to their old methods. The streamlined onboarding process and the exceptional support stood out for Essentia Health. Lindberg praised the experience, saying, "My overall experience was really, really good and positive with the onboarding experience. I would say 10 out of 10."

Recommending ADManager Plus to other organizations, Lindberg highlighted its efficiency in Active Directory management and emphasized the timely responses, support meetings, and overall product utility.

About ADManager Plus:

ManageEngine ADManager Plus is a web-based Windows Active Directory management and reporting solution that helps Active Directory administrators and help desk technicians accomplish their day-to-day activities. With an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, ADManager Plus handles a variety of complex tasks, like AD object backup and recovery, user account provisioning, and stale account management, and generates an exhaustive list of Active Directory reports, many of which are essential requirements for satisfying compliance audits. It also helps administrators manage and report on their Exchange Server, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Active Directory environments—all from a single console. For more information about ADManager Plus, visit manageengine.com/ad-manager.