Helpdesk

The helpdesk should work for you...  

As network administrator of a large Active Directory or NT-based network, you often struggle to find the time to do the things you really think are important, such as research new technologies, coordinate migration projects and install/configure new hardware and software.  Then there are the tedious and basic daily user management tasks such as unlocking user accounts and resetting passwords.  The problem is that you don't want to make helpdesk employees administrators on the network and that Active Directory delegation leaves a lot to be desired.

Simple and Secure

We have the perfect solution for task-based delegation of administrative user management tasks.  Our unique concept is forms, which is a technology to create a secure and seamlessly adapted user interface to execute just the job you want them to do.  A form contains only the elements for a specific job and can be delegated to any Windows user or group.  

Ok, give me an example

Let's take the example of resetting passwords.  What you want your helpdesk employees to do is simply select a user from the Active Directory, or better, only from a specific OU or group, then click a button to submit the selection.  What you want your form to do in the background is to authenticate the helpdesk user and approve the job, resolve the selected user account from Active Directory, edit the user account and apply a fixed password for the user account and display a confirmation message on the job status.  

How does it Work?  

So, the user is working with a forms client and connects to the User Management Resource Administrator delegation service.  While this service has administrative priviliges, the helpdesk employee has not.  When the forms client connects, it authenticates the user and downloads a list of all available forms for the helpdesk user.  Then the helpdesk user selects the form named "Reset password", selects a user account and clicks on the submit button.  The job is then approved by the delegation service and applied to the Active Directory.  

What about flexibility?  

This is where User Management Resource Administrator really shines.  The form architecture is based on form objects and visual scripts.  The form objects are the things that as presented to the user account, such as the table containing the users for which the password must be reset, and the button to submit the job.  When this job is submitted, the information specified by the helpdesk user passes through the visual script assigned to the form.  This visual script, which can be composed of many building blocks called "script actions", needs to edit the selected user account and set a fixed password.  So what if you don't want a fixed password but something that the helpdesk user can type in?  Just add an input box to the form, pass the information from the input box to the script action and link it to the password property, it's that easy.  

Better than native Active Directory delegation?  

The Active Directory in Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003 offers object-based delegation of authority.  Administation and management of this system is time-consuming and does not produce a clear overview of delegated permissions.  Furthermore, it doesn't work on Windows NT4 or Exchange 5.5 based environments.  See the comparison details below.  Take me to why better than Windows delegation?.  

What does it look like?  

The below screenshot shows a sample of a form, loaded in the Windows forms client.  This form has been specifically designed to create a new user account based on the name properties, and then assign group memerships and OU location based on the department.  

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