There are a lot of tasks in IT that need to be completed by a human. There area lot that don’t need to be completed by a human. The trick to efficient IT service delivery is to automate everything that doesn’t specifically need to be done by a human. We’ve made some progress on new user creation automation recently that we want to share.
The Problem of New User Creation
One common task for many organizations is creating new users. Some larger organizations have full time IT staff that create and off-board users all day long. If you work for a company that has more than a couple hundred users and has some turnover, it can consume a large portion of your IT team’s schedule. This doesn’t leave time for them to tackle strategic initiatives and other priorities.
The challenge is that new user creation can be complex. Not only do you have to create a new user in Active Directory, but you must assign the appropriate permissions and security groups. If they need access to company apps, you’ll need to set that up as well. Some companies have multiple apps that every user needs an account for. Email accounts will need to be created and the client configured for the user.
The number of steps leads to mistakes and having to redo things. All of it takes your most precious resource, time.
Automating New User Creation
i.t.NOW manages over 7000 endpoints and counting. As you can imagine we have a significant amount of new user requests come in every day. We wanted to solve this problem, and so we set about to do so.
Essentially the idea is to have a computer do all the legwork that one of our technicians would traditionally have to do. This is accomplished by scripting. We leverage PowerShell and our RMM platform to script out creating new users in AD. Scripting is used for new user creation in their applications, and we script out the creation of user accounts.
We created a user-friendly web form that key contacts with the correct permissions within client organizations can leverage to submit a new user request. They provide the pertinent information, and the scripting engine hums to life.
The scripts all run in an automated fashion. They happen quicker than a tech can type in most cases. There is never a mistake because computers don’t make mistakes. The user is provisioned quickly and efficiently. Support cost can be lower because of the time saved, and IT can focus on more strategic tasks.
Benefits of Using i.t.NOW
We built this solution for a particular client that had multiple new user requests almost every day. It has eliminated frustration and made it much easier for them to set up a recruit. We can even run it in reverse to shut down accounts when somebody leaves the company.
Now that we’ve done the heavy lifting of building the scripts, we can easily modify them for the specific needs of each of our clients. Every time we innovate for one it benefits all our clients at i.t.NOW. If you want some help leveraging new user creation automation to better manage IT in your business, we would love to help. We’re better at it than just about anybody. Give us a call today!
