Workflow allows for multiple roles/responsibilities to be involved in a process which is often automated. For example, onboarding of an employee could include HR, the department manager, the Active Directory administrator, a technician, etc. There are many organizations that use workflow due to separation of duties or compliance regulations. Companies that don’t use workflow may want to consider the control that workflow provides over some automation tasks, which might not provide 100% correct inputs.
With the advent of PowerShell, especially the Active Directory module for PowerShell, administrators have been attempting to automate certain tasks that occur in Active Directory on a regular basis. The issue is not whether or not PowerShell can complete the task, the issue is the fact that PowerShell does not allow for any verification for what it is going to do, so errors (sometimes gross errors) can occur to many objects in Active Directory without notification. Trying to recover from an Active Directory modification that PowerShell performed can be time consuming.
If PowerShell provided a workflow process it might be a solid solution for managing Active Directory. However, that option does not exist without countless hours of coding and testing.
Workflow can enhance automation by allowing the administrator to verify that the changes being suggested by the automation process are correct!
Let’s discuss a simple process that might be automated: new user creation.
For organizations that do not use workflow today, you might have had issues with PowerShell performing incorrect actions on new user accounts. Automating new user creation with PowerShell requires complex CSV files or complex scripting and one small typo or incorrect input can cause significant incorrect data placed into Active Directory. Without workflow, it is nearly impossible to know when issues occur and what issues were placed into Active Directory.
Now, consider the same process of automating new user creation, but with workflow. Instead of the automation just blasting information into Active Directory without any ability to verify the data, an email is sent to one or more administrators that can verify the correctness of the data. Notice Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate the simple, yet powerful, review options available with ADManager Plus’s workflow.
Figure 1. ADManager Plus provides a summary of the new users needing to be created.
Figure 2. ADManager Plus provides a simple and easy to read interface to review new user details.
With just a few seconds of verification, new users placed into Active Directory can always have correct names, groups, configurations, etc. No more will you be spending time sifting through Active Directory trying to find the users that were incorrectly configured with PowerShell!
If you want to see how simple and powerful ADManager Plus is for yourself, you can download the full version here.
