Active Directory account status reports

Managing Active Directory user accounts is a core cybersecurity and IT compliance responsibility for Windows admins. Besides giving employees access to their organization's network, admins also grant users access to resources and information by assigning appropriate permissions and software licenses. Any hiccups in managing Active Directory user accounts could not only deny access to employees but could also create holes in the organization's security and escalate IT costs. To prevent these mishaps, admins must accurately manage user accounts in their organization.

Understanding the role of the UserAccountControl attribute

A fundamental part of this management is understanding the UserAccountControl attribute—a critical property in Active Directory that encodes various account settings and statuses, including whether the account is enabled, disabled, locked, or requires a smart card for login. It uses a combination of flags to represent these states, making it essential for determining user account statuses. While it can be can be managed using Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) or PowerShell, these legacy tools make reporting cumbersome and time-consuming. A simpler and more powerful alternative is ManageEngine ADManager Plus, a user account status reporting tool.

How to generate Active Directory user account status reports

ADManager Plus offers over 200 prepackaged reports that fetch intricate details from Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and Exchange environments, including status-based details for user accounts such as:

• Enabled or disabled user accounts
• Locked-out users
• Expired users
• Recently expired user accounts
• Soon-to-expire user accounts
• User accounts that never expire
• Smart-card-enabled users

To generate these reports,

1. Log in to ADManager Plus and navigate to Reports > User Reports.
2. Select your preferred report under the Account Status Reports list.
3. Choose the domain and OU, and click Generate.

Enabled or disabled user accounts

Find all Active Directory enabled or disabled users and computer accounts in your environment. From these reports, admins can easily enable, disable, move, or delete user accounts as needed or as per their company's policies.

Locked-out user accounts

Find locked-out accounts in Active Directory with details on users whose access was restricted because of failed login attempts.

Account expired users

Identify all the users whose accounts have expired in a particular domain. You can export the details of users with expired accounts in multiple formats, like CSV, PDF, XLSX HTML, CSVDE, and XLS.

Recently expired user accounts

View all the user accounts that have expired during any specified period of time. Based on the organization's policy or the current need, admins can delete these accounts, disable them, move them to a specific OU where expired accounts are held, or change the account expiration date to never—all from within the report. This report also helps admins identify expired accounts and free up licenses to save costs.

Soon-to-expire user accounts

Find all the users whose accounts will expire in the next few days, weeks, or months. Admins can prevent their employees from being denied access to their domain by proactively reviewing and extending account expiration dates as needed. Besides ensuring users have uninterrupted access to organizational resources, it also helps admins avoid frantic help desk calls from users.

User accounts that never expire

Identify all user accounts that are set to never expire. As this report also displays the account status, admins can enable disabled accounts right from the report. If needed, they can also disable or delete any account in the list using the report's built-in management options.

Smart-card-enabled users

View a report detailing all the users in the domain with smart card login permissions enabled. Use this information to ensure that only authorized users are allowed to log in using smart cards.

Effortless user status reporting and management with ADManager Plus

Actionable insights

Get over 200 prepackaged reports on user status, licenses, and activity, and perform management actions right from the reports. ADManager Plus also offers a built-in report scheduler that can automatically export and email reports to your preferred users in any format, including CSV, PDF, XLSX HTML, CSVDE, and XLS.

Automation and workflow

Automate routine Active Directory tasks, such as user provisioning and deprovisioning, cleaning up dormant accounts, and and managing NTFS and share permissions. Build a custom workflow structure to help with ticketing and compliance.

Unified administration

ADManager Plus serves as a web-based solution for all your Active Directory, Exchange, Skype for Business, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365 management needs. Download a free trial today to explore all these features.

Need Features? Tell Us

If you want to see additional features implemented in ADManager Plus, we would love to hear. Click here to continue