Beaver Excavating automates onboarding and offboarding with ADManager Plus

Business challenges

• Slow, drawn-out onboarding and offboarding: Setting up a new user meant creating the account and then working through a series of follow-on tasks by hand, and departures required the same care in reverse.
• Manual post-creation tasks: After an account was created, group memberships and Microsoft 365 licensing still had to be added separately, often delegated as a second round of work.
• Licensing left behind: When users left, disabled accounts could retain group memberships and Microsoft 365 licenses unless someone remembered to remove them.

The problem

Beaver Excavating's IT systems team manages the Active Directory and Microsoft 365 accounts for a large, distributed construction workforce. Before ADManager Plus, the mechanics of bringing a new employee on board were reliable but slow. Creating the account was only the first step; assigning the right groups, applying the correct Microsoft 365 license, and configuring the user for their role were separate tasks, frequently handed off to be completed after the fact.

Offboarding carried the same overhead. Disabling an account did not by itself remove its group memberships or reclaim its licenses, so keeping licensing in check depended on manual follow-through. Neither process was broken, but both took far longer than they needed to.

The solution

Beaver Excavating adopted ManageEngine ADManager Plus and used its automation to collapse onboarding and offboarding into a single, consistent process. New user creation templates now handle account setup automatically, configuring each user according to their job title, with the appropriate group assignments and Microsoft 365 licensing applied as part of account creation rather than afterward.

On the way out, ADManager Plus's disable/delete policy automatically strips group memberships and licenses from disabled accounts, so licensing stays in check without anyone having to remember the cleanup. Because groups and licenses are now applied at creation, the follow-on tasks the team used to delegate after each new account no longer exist; the automation has removed the need for them.

The team also draws on ADManager Plus reports where they add value, using the locked-out users and disabled users reports to keep an eye on account status. Support has been quick to respond on the few occasions the team has needed it.

By templating user creation and automating offboarding cleanup, Beaver Excavating has turned a drawn-out manual process into one that largely runs itself, keeping groups and Microsoft 365 licensing tidy along the way. The team rates its overall experience with ADManager Plus at 8 out of 10 and is highly likely to recommend it, scoring that likelihood at 10.

About ADManager Plus

ADManager Plus is an identity governance and administration (IGA) solution that simplifies identity management, ensures security, and improves compliance. With ADManager Plus, manage the user life cycle from provisioning to deprovisioning, run access certification campaigns, orchestrate identity management across enterprise applications, and protect data on your enterprise platforms with regular backups. Use over 200 reports to gain valuable insights into identities and their access rights. Improve the efficiency of your IGA operations with workflows, automations, and role-based access control policies. ADManager Plus' Android and iOS applications help with on-the-go AD and Azure AD management. For more information about ADManager Plus, visit https://www.manageengine.com/products/ad-manager/.