Active Directory User Accounts

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Scripting Guide

Consider the life cycle of an Active Directory user account. Common user account administrative tasks that occur over the lifetime of a user account include creating the user account, setting the user accounts initial password, enabling the user account, and configuring the user accounts attributes. Scripts can be used to automate all of these user account management tasks.

To maintain control of user accounts on an ongoing basis, you can create scripts to audit user accounts, generate reports, verify common settings, and change user account settings as necessary. Other common management tasks that can be scripted include copying, moving, and renaming user accounts.

If you need to locate multiple user accounts that reside in different organizational units or domains, you can use scripts to search for the user accounts in Active Directory. Finally, when an employee leaves the company, you can disable the employees user account for a fixed amount of time and delete the user account once you are certain the account is no longer needed. All of the steps in the life cycle of a user account can be automated using scripts.