The essential toolkit for effective AD management:
The Integrations Handbook

The essential toolkit for effective AD management: The Integrations Handbook

Introduction

IT management becomes unwieldy when technicians work with too many applications, even if they're just executing simple tasks. Instead of deploying applications that work in silos, ADManager Plus integrates with IT service management (ITSM) tools such as ServiceDesk Plus and ServiceNow, allowing your technicians to perform their IT management tasks from a single tool.

While ADManager Plus helps manage all aspects of Active Directory (AD), ITSM tools provide help desks with greater visibility and centralized control. ADManager Plus also integrates with HR application databases like Oracle and MS SQL to help manage employee details in your organization. These integrations help technicians perform various AD user management tasks, from user onboarding to deprovisioning. In addition, ADManager Plus also sends logs to a syslog server, which can be utilized by SIEM applications to audit AD management activities.

Benefits of ADManager Plus' integrations

By implementing ADManager Plus' integrations in your organization, you can:

• Make onboarding fast, efficient, user-friendly, and employee-centric.
• Ensure demands for employee role changes, transfers, promotions, and relocations are processed seamlessly.
• Drive standardization to improve efficiency, compliance, and productivity.
• Reduce onboarding backlogs.
• Enable employees to make smarter requests for password resets and instant account unlocks.
• Ensure error-free documentation and data entry.

Integrating with help desk applications

Integrating help desk applications like ServiceDesk Plus and ServiceNow with ADManager Plus makes it easy for you to:

• Simultaneously provision user accounts in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Skype for Business.
• Save time and effort by performing routine activities from a single console. You'll no longer need to copy data from service requests to the native AD management tool.
• Customize user details during onboarding with the help of ADManager Plus' user templates.
• Standardize your user naming format and prevent the creation of duplicate user accounts in AD.
• Resolve password reset requests quickly, reducing employee idle time and increasing your organization's net productivity.

This integration also enables end users to create requests for any of the available AD management activities through the Service Catalog.

ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus

ServiceDesk Plus helps admins manage IT tickets, hardware, and software efficiently. After integrating ADManager Plus with ServiceDesk Plus, administrators can create, delete, unlock, and enable or disable users, as well as reset user passwords from the ServiceDesk Plus console. This helps admins easily perform all aspects of user provisioning.

ServiceNow

ServiceNow is an ITSM tool that makes it easy for users to submit and track IT requests. The ADManager Plus-ServiceNow integration helps you simplify user onboarding as well as scale onboarding to an enterprise level. It also supports more ecient identity management, and more accurate oboarding processes. This integration also helps enable, disable, or unlock user accounts, reset AD users' passwords, alter group membership details by adding or removing user accounts from groups, and more.

Redefine employee productivity, lower operating costs, and improve overall administration through a consistent system of engagement. You can even carry out AD management activities while handling IT issues. With this integration, end users create requests for any of the available AD management activities under the Service Catalog. Technicians can view their requests under the Incidents tab and perform AD management tasks through the form context menu.

Steps to configure ServiceNow in ADManager Plus:

• In ADManager Plus, click the Admin tab.
• Under System Settings, click Integrations.
• Under ITSM/Help Desk Tools, click Under ITSM/Help Desk Tools, click ServiceNow.
• In the ServiceNow URL field, enter the URL where your ServiceNow instance is hosted.
• Click Test Connection and Save to establish a connection and save your settings.

Integrating with HR databases

HR databases are the back-end storage that enable HR applications to run smoothly. Oracle and MS SQL are two of the most widely-used databases across organizations today. Using ADManager Plus, IT admins can schedule automation tasks, which can help with identity provisioning. An Oracle or MS SQL database can be configured as the data source for user information in ADManager Plus, enabling it to fetch user information from these databases and create user accounts at a scheduled time.

Using ADManager Plus' user creation templates

Identity provisioning is one of the most important processes for an organization, as it's often the first impression new employees get while being onboarded . This integration oers the best platform to welcome an employee into your organization without experiencing any hiccups, as it doesn't stop simply with user creation. The user creation templates in ADManager Plus help you:

• Create user accounts in Active Directory, Exchange, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Skype for Business.
• Configure Exchange-related properties for new users such as storage limits, delivery restrictions, and more.
• Manage group memberships.
• Eliminate duplication of users.
• Streamline naming formats.
• Customize password formats and allow new users to set random passwords.

Oracle database integration

MS SQL Integration

Integrating with SIEM applications

SIEM applications collect data from various sources and monitor this data for security purposes. Logs are one of the most important sources of data for any SIEM tool. By analyzing these logs, admins can troubleshoot, ensure compliance with regulations, investigate security incidents, and more. With this integration, SIEM applications will receive real-time records of technicians' activity performed using ADManager Plus.

ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus

ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus is a secure, web-based, end-user password reset management program. This software helps domain users update account information on their own in Microsoft Windows Active Directory

Self-service prerequisites

Help Desk Assisted Self-Service with ADSelfService Plus mandates the following prerequisites:

Self-service approval workflow

By enabling the self-service approval workflow feature, you can route self-service requests from end users through your IT help desk for approval. After approval from the IT help desk, the self-service requests will be updated in Active Directory. This feature will help you take hold of users' self-service operations and maintain control over what details get updated in Active Directory. Refer to the image below to see how this process works.

Steps to integrate ADSelfService Plus with ADManager Plus:

The requests created by users from ADSelfService Plus can be managed and executed by your IT help desk staff using ADManager Plus.

• Download and install ADSelfService Plus.
• Log in to the ADSelfService Plus web console with admin credentials.
• Navigate to Admin → Product Settings → Integration Settings.
• Click the ADManager Plus product tile.
• In the Server Name or IP field, enter the name of the server on which ADManager Plus is installed.
• Enter the Port Number used by ADManager Plus.
• Select the Protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) enabled in ADManager Plus from the drop-down menu.
• Click Save.

Once integrated, you can enable the Approval Workflow in ADSelfService Plus

Steps to configure a self-service approval workflow:

• Launch ADSelfService Plus and log in as an administrator.
• Navigate to Configuration → Administrative Tools → Approval Workflow.
• Check Enable Approval Workflow.
• Under Available Actions, select which self-service actions should come under the approval workflow.
• Select the policies for which you want to enable the approval workflow.
• Click Save.

Steps to configure an approval workflow for password resets and account unlocks:

If you have enabled an approval workflow for password resets and account unlocks, then you have to configure security questions. These will be used by the help desk technicians to verify the identities of end users before approving their actions.

• In ADSelfService Plus, navigate to Configuration → Administrative Tools → Approval Workflow.
• Check Enable Approval Workflow.
• Enable the Reset Password/Unlock Account option and click Configure AD Questions.
• In the dialog box that opens, you will see a list of security questions already configured by default. You can add, delete, edit, enable, and disable the security questions as you wish.
• To add a new security question, click + Add Question at the bottom of the dialog box. Enter the new security question and select the corresponding LDAP attribute. The value of the selected attribute will serve as the answer to the security question.
• Once you have configured the security questions, click Save to close the dialog box and click Save again to save the approval workflow.

From the ADManager Plus console, the administrator may set assigning rules and notification rules as per one's requirement.

Integration with custom HCM/HRMS applications

Most mid-to-large enterprises employ Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions to manage employee lifecycles. ADManager Plus seamlessly integrates with any custom HCM/HRMS products with API support and enables you to automatically manage employee details on the go.

For detailed steps on how to integrate ADManager Plus with a custom HCM/HRMS application, refer to this help document.

Summary

Despite varying IT architectures, every enterprise has a help desk that serves their employees. The ADManager Plus integrations can redefine employee productivity, lower operating costs, and improve overall administration through a consistent system of engagement and decentralized Active Directory management. Some of the key tasks technicians can perform with this integration include

• Provisioning AD, Exchange, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Skype for Business accounts simultaneously using ADManager Plus' User Creation Templates.
• Deprovisioning or deleting AD user accounts.
• Enabling, disabling, or unlocking user accounts.
• Resetting AD users' passwords.
• Empowering end users with self service.
• Altering group membership details by adding or removing user accounts from groups.
• Saving time and cutting costs by connecting the applications used by different departments across your organization
• Enhancing security.
• Improving user experience and sustaining productivity through quicker resolution of user issues.