Zoho Corp. has a generous offer for 4sysops readers. You have the chance to win a license for ManageEngine ADManager Plus Professional Edition, a powerful web-based Active Directory management and reporting tool. The raffled license is valid for one Active Directory domain with an unlimited number of AD objects and five help desk technicians. The regular price of this license would be 2,695 US dollars!

ADManager Plus has three main functions: Active Directory management, reporting and delegation. Today I will make some general remarks about the tool and in the next two posts I will explain its features in more detail.

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In my last post, I gave a general introduction to ManageEngine AD Manager Plus. Note that you can win a license worth 2,695 US dollars (see info at end of the article). Today, I will focus on the tool’s Active Directory management features.

ADManager Plus allows you to manage the most important Active Directory objects. You can create and modify user objects, computers, contacts, and groups. The tool also supports bulk creation and bulk modification of AD objects.

User Management

AD Manager Plus’s most important functions are its user management features. The tool distinguishes between single user and bulk user management tasks. Creating a single user is different than in the Active Directory User and Computer interface (ADUC). You don’t have to navigate through a wizard and modify the attributes after the creation of the user object. Instead ADManager Plus presents all important attribute fields on a page with five tabs for the different attribute groups (see screenshot).

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In the last post of this series I described Active Directory management features of AD Manager Plus. Note that you can win a license worth 2,695 US dollars (see info at end of the article). Today I will introduce the tool’s delegation and reporting features.

Active Directory Delegation

You probably know that the Active Directory User and Computer interface (ADUC) supports delegation. This allows you to assign specific AD management privileges to help desk personnel . The idea behind AD Manager Plus’s delegation feature is the same; however, the tool’s capabilities are more sophisticated.

The main difference to the delegation feature in ADUC is that ADManager Plus allows you to configure delegation roles. These roles are basically templates which you can reuse to assign a certain set of privileges to a user or a user group. Another advantage of ADManager Plus is that you cannot only apply delegation roles to a single container, but also to multiple containers in one step.

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