Schedule Tasks for Active Directory Management

Using the Scheduled Tasks feature of Adaxes you can schedule various Active Directory management tasks to run automatically at predefined intervals. Scheduled Tasks are often used to automatically add or remove AD objects from groups, send e-mail notifications, clean inactive user and computer accounts from Active Directory, move objects between OUs based on certain policies, etc.

The tutorial includes step-by-step instructions on how to create a Scheduled Task in Adaxes.

Launch Adaxes Administration Console, expand your Adaxes service, right-click Scheduled Tasks, point to New and click Scheduled Task. The Create Scheduled Task wizard will open.

On the Task Schedule page, you need to define the time or time interval at which the task must be run.



Select the desired time or time interval and click Next.

On this page, you need to choose the type of Active Directory objects, on which the new Scheduled Task will be executed. The Scheduled Task will be executed on all objects of the chosen type included in the activity scope of the task.

If you want the Scheduled Task to be performed on user objects, select User in the Object type list, and click Next.

At the next step, you need to specify which actions the task will perform when it is executed. To add an action:

• Click the Add Action link.
• Select the action you need in the list.
• Configure action parameters and execution options.

If you want the selected action to be performed only after its execution is approved by a human, select the Get approval for this action option and specify the approvers.

• When finished, click OK.

To add other actions, right-click the action/condition set and click Add Action in the context menu.

Actions are executed sequentially according to their order in the set. Click Move Up and Move Down buttons to move the selected action up or down in the chain of execution.

You may want specific task actions to be executed, only if certain conditions are met. To add a condition:

• Right-click the action set for which you want to add a condition, and click Add Condition in the context menu.
  
• In the dialog that opens, select the condition type and specify condition options in the Condition Parameters section.
• Click OK.

If there are two or more conditions, they are combined by AND/OR operator. If conditions are combined by the AND operator, the actions are executed provided that all conditions are met. If conditions are combined by the OR operator, the actions are executed provided that at least one condition is met. To change the operator, just click it.

To execute different actions for different conditions, click the Add action to a new set link and repeat steps from 5 to 7. When finished, click Next.

Sets of actions and conditions are executed in a sequential order. To change the order of their execution, select the set you need (make sure no action or condition is selected), and click Move Up or Move Down icon below.

When finished, click Next.

On the Activity Scope page, you need to specify the Active Directory objects on which the task will be executed. A Scheduled Task can be executed on all objects in an AD domain, on the objects located under specific Organizational Units, group and Business Unit members, on specific objects, etc. If necessary, you can exclude Active Directory objects from the activity scope of the task.

To specify on which AD objects the task will be executed, click Add.

Scheduled Task Examples

Example 1 - Add all objects located under a specific Organizational Unit to a group.

Example 2 - Move user objects between OUs.

Example 3 - Update the Description property of user objects using a modification template.

Example 4 - Send email notifications to users with no mobile phone specified.