Active Directory search

Searching for user accounts, groups, computers, and contacts in Active Directory (AD) is an activity that can't be avoided. One of the top searches in AD is locating accounts that need to be managed. Whether they're resetting passwords, unlocking locked-out accounts, modifying group memberships for users or contacts, or enabling or disabling accounts, admins often need to track down accounts to complete routine management tasks.

Although PowerShell and Microsoft's Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) console can help with finding accounts in AD, neither tools are user-friendly or flexible. Enter ManageEngine's AD management solution, ADManager Plus. With a built-in AD search engine, ADManager Plus is more powerful, flexible, and practical than the basic search functionality offered in native AD consoles.

Active Directory search with ADManager Plus

ADManager Plus is an identity governance and administration (IGA) solution that offers various capabilities to simplify identity management, ensure security, and improve compliance. It offers the following AD search capabilities, which make it easy to not only locate the desired objects, but also manage them right from the search results.

Employee search:

Find information about any colleague, including their email address, contact number, or seating location, through ADManager Plus' secure AD search.

• Search for both user accounts and contact objects.
• Specify the fields or attributes (name, email address, contact number, etc.) that you'd like to see in the search results.
• Restrict the search range to only specific domains or OUs.

Default search filter:

Find any user, group, computer, or contact object without having to manually enter the condition to perform the search. This search filter has All and Contains as default values in the conditions field. The All value refers to the common conditions applicable to all four object types. You can enter the name of the object and generate the results. You can also further configure the default search settings by specifying the filters and result column that should be displayed in the final report. Choose the management actions that should be performed directly from the report.

Advanced AD search:

Locate any user account, group, or computer object present in your AD and modify their attributes right from the search results. Zero in on the desired object using common and easy-to-remember fields or attributes, such as common name, display name, email alias, and description.

This advanced search also offers the flexibility to limit the search scope to only users, groups, or computers; restrict the search range to specific domains or organizational units (OU); and use any grouped or ungrouped condition framed using contains, starts with, ends with, etc. to locate the desired objects.

On-the-fly AD search:

Locate users, groups, computers, contacts, and OUs on the fly while performing an AD management action. For example, launch the Reset User Password feature in ADManager Plus, use the feature's search option to locate a user account, and reset the user's password from the search results.

With AD's native search tool, you have to execute the search to get the location of the relevant account, then navigate to that location, find the object, and perform the required management action on it. Avoid all that hassle with ADManager Plus' on-the-fly AD search option, which is built into all ADManager Plus' management features to make managing AD accounts quick and easy.

Condensed AD search:

Locate any account or object in AD based on the operation that you wish to perform. Use the search and management options built into reports to locate relevant users and perform the action of your choice right from the report. For example, instead of rummaging through all the users in your AD to find a user account that you want to unlock, you can search for the necessary account among only the locked out user accounts in the specific domain or OU of your AD. To do this, just run the Locked-out Users report, which is one of over 150 prepackaged reports in ADManager Plus.

ADManager Plus' multiple search options not only make searching AD effortless, but they're so efficient, they make managing your AD accounts easy.

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