In my last post, I described how you can perform quick queries with MaxPowerSoft Active Directory Reports 5.1.1.1. Today, I will focus on the tool’s special features, that is membership reports, filters and print preview. Note that you can win a license worth 299 US dollars (see info at end of the article).

Group Membership

When you load a report and then select some users, the “Load Membership” menu item becomes available and you can load membership for those selected users. The detail grid with membership information will be loaded as a sub grid of every record and the “+” sign will be highlighted meaning that membership is available for that particular users. You can click that little “plus” sign, extend that row to see membership information.

Filters

To generate common reports, you won’t need filters. Most of the typical reports can be created by using AD Reports’ navigation pane. However, sometimes, the output is just too big; you could then use a filter to further narrow down the list of AD objects. In addition, you can run uncommon searches using filters. AD Reports has two filter types: the general filter settings in the taskbar and a special filter in the results pane.

The general filter settings allow you to limit the search on the number of objects displayed, the time range and the object’s membership. The time range refers either to the creation date or to the date when the object was last changed.

My favorite AD Reports feature are the filters (right click on column header). The filter works similar to the one you might know from the Active Directory User and Computer interface (ADUC). However, it is easier-to-use and more powerful. Whereas the ADUC filter only supports logical operators other than the AND operator through command-based LDAP queries, you can use AD Reports’ GUI to easily click together a complex filter using common logical operators such as OR, Not AND, Not OR, etc. The currently active filter is always displayed at the bottom of the results pane. This way, you don’t forget that the output is filtered.

Print Preview

Another highlight of the new AD Reports version is the customizable print preview. Printouts can give you a better overview of a report. The problem with printed reports is that often not all of the information fits easily on the limited size of a sheet of paper. That’s why it is important that you are able not only to preview the print but also to customize the printout. With most other AD reporting tools, you have to do this with an external application such as Excel. AD Reports already comes with a nice Print Preview application, which saves you the step of exporting the report before you print it.

You can add a header and a footer, change the margins, and you can specify the number of pages that a row will span in the printout. If you want everything to fit onto one page, you can go back to the search results pane and remove columns. It is also possible to change the column width of each attribute. However, you can’t do that in the print preview app; you have to use the search results pane for this.

Conclusion

AD Reports’ strength is the modern and customizable user interface that enables you to quickly perform complex Active Directory queries. Of course, you can also export reports in all common formats (CSV, XLS, TXT, HTML, XML, PDF). It is typical for AD Reports that you can even speed up the export by placing a button for your favorite export format on the taskbar. In environments with a large number of AD objects, you will notice that the tool generates reports pretty fast. Thus, one could say that AD Reports’ focus is speed.

If you want to take part in this contest, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

AD Reports.

Please add your name and the name of your organization for which you will want to use the license. The deadline for this contest is November 25, 2009.