Active Directory management tool

Why Active Directory management is a growing challenge

Active Directory (AD) management is the complete administration and maintenance of an organization's AD infrastructure and all its components — user and group accounts, computers, organizational units (OUs), domain controllers (DCs), and the Group Policy that governs them. In practice, managing AD means handling user creation and password resets, group membership, Group Policy enforcement, reporting, and auditing—all in support of a secure, compliant, and smoothly running IT environment.

That sounds straightforward in a small domain. As organizations grow, AD environments sprawl across multiple domains and DCs, and routine tasks turn into bottlenecks. Manual provisioning in Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) invites inconsistent attributes and naming errors. Permissions accumulate faster than anyone audits them, creating security blind spots; and every audit cycle, admins scramble to assemble evidence that native tools were never designed to produce.

Additionaly, most environments now span on-premises AD and the cloud, so the same identities must stay consistent across a hybrid identity environment that includes Microsoft Entra ID. Utilizing native tools or PowerShell for these tasks requires a thorough understanding of the complex administration process and related technologies.

What tool is commonly used to manage Active Directory?

Most teams start with Microsoft's native tools and reach for a dedicated platform as they scale:

• ADUC: The classic tool for day-to-day user, group, and OU administration.
• Active Directory Administrative Center (ADAC): A modern console for AD, adding fine-grained password policies and a recycle bin.
• PowerShell: The native option for bulk and scripted operations; powerful but code-heavy and error-prone at scale.
• ADManager Plus: AD management software that automates and simplifies time-consuming tasks while providing comprehensive reports on AD objects. This solution provides customizable smart templates, automation, bulk management options, and more for managing all aspects of account creation and modification, across AD, Exchange, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace platforms.

Capabilities that go beyond native tools

Using ADManager Plus, Active Directory managers can: manage AD objects in bulk; standardize AD management with smart templates; simplify AD administration with CSV imports; empower technicians with secure AD delegation; enable automated user provisioning and deprovisioning; deploy on-the-fly AD management from reports; orchestrate AD administration with event-driven automations; and perform stale account cleanup and deprovisioning.

Manage AD objects in bulk  

Manage AD objects using the predefined bulk management actions in ADManager Plus. Reset user passwords, move OUs, enable or disable users, unlock AD users, manage mailboxes, and more for a group of objects at the same time.

Standardize AD management with smart templates  

Use smart templates to standardize AD administration in your organization. Define rules, mandate fields, pre-fill attributes, and auto-populate fields while managing AD users, groups, computers, and more.

Simplify AD administration with CSV imports

Create, delete, and manage multiple users in bulk at the same time with a CSV file. Import object properties and manage multiple AD objects in one go without using complex PowerShell scripts, ADUC, and other conventional tools.

Empower technicians with secure AD delegation  

Using ADManager Plus' delegation capabilities, administrators can create help desk roles with the desired set of tasks, and securely assign them to desired users, non-admin users, or help desk technicians. Admins can still standardize and retain control over the execution of delegated tasks by designing and assigning custom account creation and modification templates to help desks and also using an approval-based workflow.

Enable automated user provisioning and deprovisioning  

Automate routine IT admin tasks such as user provisioning and deprovisioning, AD cleanup, password resets, and more. Bid goodbye to manual errors with scheduled and event-driven AD automation. This AD manager also sends customized notifications (via email or SMS) to update the relevant stakeholders about the status of those automated AD management tasks.

Deploy on-the-fly AD management from reports  

ADManager Plus provides information on different AD objects with over 200 prepackaged AD reports. These reports enable you to view, analyze, and take appropriate actions on the AD objects directly from their report itself. For instance, you can get the list of all inactive users in your AD from the Inactive Users report and disable them. This solution also provides a variety of reports specially designed to meet the requirements of compliance standards like SOX, HIPAA, the GDPR, and more.

Orchestrate AD administration with event-driven automations  

Orchestration templates help you automatically perform consecutive AD management actions. They can be directly applied to user accounts in bulk to sequentially perform the desired set of actions on them—not only in AD, but also in other enterprise applications, including HCM solutions, ITSM solutions, and databases. These templates can be easily configured using drag-and-drop actions and can be used to perform cascading actions. Orchestration templates can also be used in scheduled and event-driven automations to automatically perform the defined actions either at a desired time or based on an action trigger.

Perform stale account cleanup and deprovisioning  

Inactive accounts are a quiet but serious risk. Every stale, enabled account is a standing attack surface. Automated deprovisioning workflows handle this cleanup the same way they handle offboarding. ADManager Plus runs scheduled stale account cleanup powered by AD automation, identifying dormant users and computers, then disabling, moving, or deleting them based on a defined policy. The same automated deprovisioning workflows that handle offboarding apply here, so accounts don't linger after their owners are gone. Continuous cleanup keeps the directory lean, accurate, and far harder to exploit.

Streamline AD management using ADManager Plus

IT administrators can accomplish the following activities:

• Active Directory user management
• Active Directory computer management
• Active Directory group management
• Active Directory contact management
• Exchange mailbox management
• Active Directory OU management
• File server management
• Group Policy management
• Active Directory backup and recovery
• Active Directory migration

It also empowers administrators to manage their AD environment while on the go with its iOS and Android apps. This solution allows you to integrate your AD with help desk, HCM, and SIEM software, databases, and more.

Active Directory user management  

ADManager Plus is a powerful AD user management tool, designed to streamline the management of AD user accounts through bulk operations and a user-friendly interface. With this tool, you can:

• Create and modify user accounts in bulk, configure AD attributes, Exchange Server attributes, Exchange policies, Terminal Services attributes, remote user login permissions, Lync Server/LCS/OCS attributes, and more.
• Simultaneously provision new accounts for users in Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace when creating their AD accounts.

This solution also includes customizable smart templates that enable AD managers and help desk technicians to create and modify user accounts with all the required attributes or properties in a single step.

Active Directory computer management  

Simplify AD computer management, allowing administrators to manage all AD computers from a single console: bulk creation, modification, and management of computer objects (including moving computers between organizational units), enabling and disabling computers, configuring group attributes, and automating routine computer management tasks.

Active Directory group management  

As an AD group management tool, ADManager Plus simplifies the creation, modification, and management of AD security and distribution groups. This solution allows bulk group management, including adding or removing members, configuring Exchange attributes using smart templates and CSV files. It also streamlines automated AD group management and enables administrators to implement just-in-time access.

Active Directory contact management  

ADManager Plus facilitates the bulk creation and management of AD contacts, enabling administrators to efficiently manage multiple contacts at once. You can use CSV files or customizable templates to create and modify contacts in bulk, ensuring uniformity across contacts and their attributes. This bulk management capability makes it ideal for organizations needing to manage large volumes of vendors, partners, and others effectively.

Active Directory OU management  

Create, delete, and manage OUs in bulk effortlessly with ADManager Plus' user-friendly and intuitive interface. You can automate routine tasks like OU creation, moving them from one OUs to another, and deletion, reducing errors associated with manual data entry process.

Group Policy management  

Create, modify, and manage GPOs with intuitive actions and simplify the administration of Group Policies within an AD environment. Enable and disable GPOs, enforce links, force update GPOs, manage their link order, and more with ADManager Plus' user-friendly UI.

Active Directory migration  

Securely migrate AD users, groups, contacts, and GPOs across domains and forests with or without the Active Directory Migration Tool. You can also decide how conflicts are handled during migration and define how objects must be migrated, and seamlessly migrate AD objects based on your organization's needs.

Exchange mailbox management  

As the name suggests, this module focuses exclusively on Exchange Online and Exchange Server mailbox management. You can create and modify shared, room, and equipment mailboxes effortlessly without using the Exchange Admin Center or complex PowerShell scripts. Additionally, with modification templates and predefined actions, you can modify various mailbox attributes at once.

File server management  

ADManager Plus empowers administrators to effectively control access to shared folders by assigning, modifying, or revoking file and folder permissions for users and groups. It simplifies the process of managing complex permission structures, ensuring that only authorized users have access to sensitive data. It also provides bulk file server management and automation capabilities, reducing administrative overhead and helping maintain security compliance.

Active Directory backup and recovery  

Seamlessly backup and recover AD users, groups, and more with ADManager Plus' backup and recovery capabilities. Ensure your organization is protected from accidental data loss by regularly scheduling backups and defining how data must be backed up, either fully or incrementally. It also lets you granularly recover deleted AD objects and attributes, ensuring only the required data is restored.

Benefits of choosing ADManager Plus for Active Directory administration

ADManager Plus provides a comprehensive set of features that make it an attractive choice for AD administration. Here are some of the key benefits: