UMRA – TIES SIS Active Directory Student Automation at 9:19 PM

If you haven’t already, please read my first post on where and how to download a trial version of User Management Resource Administrator, developed by tools4ever. UMRA

Download Trial Version of UMRA > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/
Download Trial Version of SSRPM > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/

UMRA – TIES SIS Active Directory Student Automation

TIES, is another popular Student Information System (SIS) our clients want to get an automatic sync with UMRA Automation to Active Directory (AD). Sync you ask? Yes, UMRA Automation can connect to the TIES Student Information System in multiple ways. In most cases, we are able to do a direct ODBC database connection, and either through a view, or custom query string, we can get all students, and there information. From this information, we are able to compare this data agsinsts whats in Active Directory. This process can be put on automated schedule, to run every hour, day, week etc. in most cases we see our clients run this nightly to make sure the data in Active Directory is in sync with TIES Now, in some cases you might not have your TIES SIS hosted on your network, it might be hosted somewhere else. This is ok, most of the time, these companies will create you a view in the TIES SIS you can call from within UMRA Automation project, with read only access. Or, they can provide you with a nightly CSV data dump. Either way, UMRA Automation can handle all of these different type of data retrieval types. So what can you sync, I bet is the next question you might be asking. UMRA Automation can really sync up any data that is provided in your database view, check student graduation years, student locations, student first name, last name, group memberships etc. Below is a quick overview of how a typical TIES Student Information Sync works.

Step 1
Get your data. As stated above this can be multiple ways, CSV, View from the database, etc. In most cases if your TIES SIS is hosted with you, you can connect directly to the database, and create yourself a view, or combine a bunch of tables together with joins until you get the data you need.

Step 2
With a UMRA Automation project, create a loop to check all the users in your data source checking for only new accounts. You can do this by checking for the student ID, or your identifier, if that is in AD go to the next record, if it’s a new record that needs to be in AD, create the account, create a home folder, create a profile path, create an email account, etc.

Step 3
With another UMRA Automation project, get all the student accounts in Active Directory and run them against the data source of students. If a user is in AD and in your SIS, then run a compare, check firstname, lastname, location etc. If a user is not in the right location, or grade move the account. Strip group membership; reapply group memberships based on new location, move home drives, and email mail stores if needed.

Step 4
Now that you have your main projects done, you can now go back and add logging / auditing into your scripts. Most of the time I will save these until last, however you can also do these while creating your other scripts to speed up the process. Why would you need logging you might ask? Anytime your script edits an object in AD, it could be a create user, move user, updating / changing an attribute, you will want to keep a history of this, that way you can go back a few months from now, and see the history of changes etc. to your users and objects in active directory.

Step 5
Now that you have all your processes really, create 1 main UMRA Automation project to call your smaller projects in succession. Dont forget to take out any starter projects such as INIT projects that have global variables in them, since you wont need to call these projects except for 1 time in the begginging of ryour run.

I hope this gives some of you out there an idea of how to get your students from TIES into Active Directory.

UMRA – Powerschool Database Data Export to Active Directory at 8:11 PM

Contact Me: mailto:jjmusicpro@hotmail.com?subject=UMRA Question

If you haven’t already, please read my first post on where and how to download a trial version of User Management Resource Administrator, developed by tools4ever. UMRA

Download Trial Version of UMRA > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/
Download Trial Version of SSRPM > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/

PowerSchool Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-powercampus-erp-active-directory.html

Destiny Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-destiny-sis-active-directory.html

Zangle Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-zangle-sis-active-directory.html

Aeires Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-aeries-sis-active-directory.html

UMRA – Powerschool Database Data Export to Active Directory

I’ve been taking a glance over some of my key words for my blog and I see of my major traffic is based on the Popular Student Information System SIS PowerSchool. Digging deep, I see that my users are very interested in getting the data from the PowerSchool Database to Active Directory. So in this blog post I will give you a quick rundown on the different ways of getting this process started.

So first thing is first, if you haven’t already you will need to download UMRA since this will be our main SIS automation tool. This will allow us to connect to the PowerSchool SIS Database, or allow you to get a CSV data dump of PowerSchool Students, and import that into Active Directory. Now, depending on if your PowerSchool SIS database is hosted internally within your network and you have control of it, or if your PowerSchool SIS database is hosted with a hosting company, the below methods will change.

If you can Connect Directly or Remotly to PowerSchool Database -
Create a UMRA Automation Project and within this project, you will need to drag/drop 1 “Generate Generic Table” action to your main script, this will be your main connector to your PowerSchool Database. Now go through the normal database connection steps as you’ve done before when creating a generic table. For the SQL query, you can either create a view to only grab the information you need from PowerSchool, or you can write a complex SQL statement to join together all the tables needed.

If you can’t Connect Directly to PowerSchool Database -
In this case you will need to create a UMRA MASS Project, since you will most likely be getting a CSV of data from the PowerSchool DB.

Ok now that we have our connect setup, the next step will be very the same, since each script weather its an UMRA Automation Project or UMRA MASS Project. So now that you have your data, you now need to create your script for student creation. Now keep in mind that UMRA has the ability to create OU’s Groups etc. So if needed you can create these on the fly, the same time you are creating your students. So first thing is first, you will need to make sure the student is not in Active Directory already, you can do a “search object AD” for this. If they are not in Active Directory lets create the account. After you’ve created the account, you can now move them to the correct location, or create the student account in the correct OU right when you create them, this is the most typical approach. After you have created the account, now you can create email accounts, home folders etc. And that’s it, a quick way to get connected to your PowerSchool Database or CSV and get those users in Active Directory.

UMRA – MASS CSV Create User Data to Active Directory at 8:09 PM

If you haven’t already, please read my first post on where and how to download a trial version of User Management Resource Administrator, developed by tools4ever. UMRA

Download Trial Version of UMRA > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/
Download Trial Version of SSRPM > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/

UMRA – MASS CSV Create User Data to Active Directory

This blog is going to be a different approach on how to use UMRA to do a UMRA MASS Create User from a Microsoft Excel CSV file. As you know, most of the topics I’ve covered are using the UMRA Automation module to automate user creation, user comparison, etc. So if you haven’t already taken a look at how to automate your student information system such as PowerSchool, Destiny, Zangle, Aeries etc. see the below blogs>

PowerSchool Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-powercampus-erp-active-directory.html

Destiny Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-destiny-sis-active-directory.html

Zangle Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-zangle-sis-active-directory.html

Aeires Student Information System SIS To Active Directory
http://activedirectoryadmin.blogspot.com/2009/07/umra-aeries-sis-active-directory.html

So again, if you haven’t already checked out the above blogs, you should so you can get an idea of how you go about using UMRA Automation to automate your Student Information Sync to Active Directory. Ok, so back to the topic of doing a UMRA MASS import of users from a CSV to Active Directory. So below I will give you some tips of how you can achieve this process with your CSV of userdata.

Step 1
The more information the better. So the more userdata you can get in your CSV, the more flexible your script can be.

Step 2
Before you start working on your script, think about what is your trying to accomplish, are you only creating user accounts, or will you be creating home/profile folders, email, group permission etc. If you’re going to just create student accounts, then you can do more than just putting all the account into one OU then sorting them later. With UMRA MASS you have the ability to create users in specific OU’s if you have data the corresponds to where they should be in Active Directory.

Example
CSV Data might have School and Grade columns, so you can map where you create the user like this. OU=%Grade%,OU=%School%,OU=….
This can be placed into your create user, so for each record it will take the CSV data and dynamically place your records data into those variables, and create the user in that OU dynamically!

Step 3
After your users are created, you can now take any other steps needed when you provision your accounts in Active Directory. This can vary from group membership, home folder creation, email create etc.

So I hope this helps some of you out there who might be trying to look for a way to do a UMRA MASS import of users into your Active Directory Environment. The steps above only really cover just a fraction of what UMRA can do, for more information on more functions see my other blogs, or visit the tools4ever.com website.

UMRA – PowerCAMPUS ERP Active Directory Student Automation at 6:40 PM

If you haven’t already, please read my first post on where and how to download a trial version of User Management Resource Administrator, developed by tools4ever. UMRA

Download Trial Version of UMRA > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/
Download Trial Version of SSRPM > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/

UMRA – PowerCAMPUS ERP Active Directory Student Automation

PowerCAMPUS Student Information System is one of the major leaders in helping schools manage their students, in a friendly fashion. However, like most Student Information Systems (SIS) they are great for the initial roll out of students, but when student accounts need to be created, updated, or managed on a daily basis there is no link to Active Directory, Exchange, Home Folders, etc. That is where UMRA Student Automation comes into play and bridges that gap, without the need of extra IT staff, or manage the students information. So, the typical UMRA Student Automation projects do for our clients can range from MASS import from PowerCAMPUS to Active Directory, this can involve, creation of student accounts, creation of home folders, setting security on those home folders, creating exchange 2000 2003 2007 email account, and all doing this in one big sweep. But UMRA Student Automation doesn’t stop there, often your PowerCAMPUS SIS is updated on a daily basies, so how can you ensure that if a student were to move schools, withdraw, or change names that these are reflected down to Active Directory in a timely manner? UMRA can handle that, yes you heard it right. UMRA not only has the ability to do MASS imports, exports, updates. But UMRA also has the ability to connect to your PowerCAMPUS SIS, get all the students, and check this information against Active Directory. UMRA will ensure that the students who need to be in active directory are, move student who have changed locations etc. So as you can see, UMRA Student Automation is one of the best and most flexible ways to get your students from PowerCAMPUS into AD, and then manage those students information on a hourly, nightly, etc. basis. Now, I know some of you might be asking what are the limitations of UMRA Student Automation projects. Now, that’s a tuff question to answer, since UMRA has the ability to create, edit, modify, move any active directory object, the possibilities are endless. Below is a quick overview of how UMRA can handle student account changes.

Student Moves Schools (Example Work Flow Process)
Student Moves Schools From Seattle To Federal Way High School (Updated In PowerCAMPUS SIS)
>Strip Current Group Memberships
>Reapply Correct Group Memberships for new school and courses
>Move Home/Profile Folders to new file server and reset security permissions
> Move exchange mail box from one mail store to another
> Move account from old OU to new OU
> Log All changes to Account to a Access, MSSQL, MYSQL etc. database
> (Optional) Email changes to Staff as FYI

New Student in PowerCAMPUS ERP System (Example Work Flow Process)
> Create New Account, username can be unique ID such as Student ID
> Set Group Memberships based on school location in PowerCAMPUS
> Create Exchange Mailbox or Hotmail or Gmail Email with an API
> Create Home/Profile Folders and setup security on those folders, these can be mapped also, so based on the students school location in PowerCAMPUS, you can have the home/profile folder created on a specific server.
> Email users information to HomeRoom Teacher, or Add data to a staging Database for School clerk to have on hand.

Student Move Up Grade(s)
> Move Student Account From Old Schools OU to New Schools OU (This can even be Grade)
> Strip Group Memberships
> Change Description or other AD attributes that may contain grade or student information
> Reapply Group Memberships based on New Schools OU
> Move Home/Profile Folders to new shares
> Move Email Mailstore from one exchange mailstore to another

Student Graduates
> Move Student to Archive OU
> Strip Group Memberships, and maybe add user to “Alumni YYYY” Group
> Move Users Home Folder to Secure Admin Share
> Download users mail store to .PST File, and put that into home folder.
> Time/Date stamp the account with current date when student account became marked as Graduated in PowerCAMPUS
> Have another UMRA Student Automation project check these dates and if over xx amount of days, you can delete the account from Active Directory.

Above is just a quick overview of one of the many ways you can really take control of your PowerCAMPUS UMRA Student Automation project. These changes will happen all behind the scenes on your specific interval. No need to manually do all these processes by hand anymore. As you can see UMRA has the ability to take the manual tasks you did on student account, and take your logic and work flows you did on those accounts, and put them into an automated processes., So if you haven’t already downloaded the trial version of UMRA do so, so you can see how it can benefit your PowerCAMPUS SIS.

UMRA – Destiny SIS Active Directory Student Automation at 7:57 PM

If you haven’t already, please read my first post on where and how to download a trial version of User Management Resource Administrator, developed by tools4ever. UMRA

Download Trial Version of UMRA > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/
Download Trial Version of SSRPM > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/

UMRA – Destiny SIS Active Directory Student Automation

Destiny Student Information System is one of the major leaders in helping schools manage their students, in a friendly fashion. However, like most Student Information Systems (SIS) they are great for the initial roll out of students, but when student accounts need to be created, updated, or managed on a daily basis there is no link to Active Directory, Exchange, Home Folders, etc. That is where UMRA Student Automation comes into play and bridges that gap, without the need of extra IT staff, or manage the students information. So, the typical UMRA Student Automation projects do for our clients can range from MASS import from Destiny to Active Directory, this can involve, creation of student accounts, creation of home folders, setting security on those home folders, creating exchange 2000 2003 2007 email account, and all doing this in one big sweep. But UMRA Student Automation doesn’t stop there, often your Destiny SIS is updated on a daily basies, so how can you ensure that if a student were to move schools, withdraw, or change names that these are reflected down to Active Directory in a timely manner? UMRA can handle that, yes you heard it right. UMRA not only has the ability to do MASS imports, exports, updates. But UMRA also has the ability to connect to your Destiny SIS, get all the students, and check this information against Active Directory. UMRA will ensure that the students who need to be in active directory are, move student who have changed locations etc. So as you can see, UMRA Student Automation is one of the best and most flexible ways to get your students from Destiny into AD, and then manage those students information on a hourly, nightly, etc. basis. Now, I know some of you might be asking what are the limitations of UMRA Student Automation projects. Now, that’s a tuff question to answer, since UMRA has the ability to create, edit, modify, move any active directory object, the possibilities are endless. Below is a quick overview of how UMRA can handle student account changes.

Student Moves Schools (Example Work Flow Process)
Student Moves Schools From Seattle To Federal Way High School (Updated In Destiny SIS)
>Strip Current Group Memberships
>Reapply Correct Group Memberships for new school and cources
>Move Home/Profile Folders to new file server and reset security permissions
>Move exchange mail box from one mailstore to another
>Move account from old OU to new OU
>Log All changes to Account to a Access, MSSQL, MYSQL etc. database
>(Optional) Email changes to Staff as FYI

Above is just a quick overview of one of the many ways you can really take control of your UMRA Student Automation project. These changes will happen all behind the scenes on your specific interval. No need to manually do all these processes by hand anymore. So if you haven’t already downloaded the trial version of UMRA do so, so you can see how it can benefit your Destiny SIS.

UMRA – Zangle SIS Active Directory Student Automation at 8:27 PM

If you haven’t already, please read my first post on where and how to download a trial version of User Management Resource Administrator, developed by tools4ever. UMRA

Download Trial Version of UMRA> http://www.tools4ever.com/download/
Download Trial Version of SSRPM > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/

UMRA – Zangle SIS Active Directory Student Automation

Zangle, is another popular Student Information System (SIS) our clients want to get an automatic sync with UMRA Automation to Active Directory (AD). Sync you ask? Yes, UMRA Automation can connect to the Zangle Student Information System in multiple ways. In most cases, we are able to do a direct ODBC database connection, and either through a view, or custom query string, we can get all students, and there information. From this information, we are able to compare this data agsinsts whats in Active Directory. This process can be put on automated schedule, to run every hour, day, week etc. in most cases we see our clients run this nightly to make sure the data in Active Directory is in sync with Zangle Now, in some cases you might not have your Zangle SIS hosted on your network, it might be hosted somewhere else. This is ok, most of the time, these companies will create you a view in the Zangle SIS you can call from within UMRA Automation project, with read only access. Or, they can provide you with a nightly CSV data dump. Either way, UMRA Automation can handle all of these different type of data retrieval types. So what can you sync, I bet is the next question you might be asking. UMRA Automation can really sync up any data that is provided in your database view, check student graduation years, student locations, student first name, last name, group memberships etc. Below is a quick overview of how a typical Zangle Student Information Sync works.

Step 1
Get your data. As stated above this can be multiple ways, CSV, View from the database, etc.

Step 2
With a UMRA Automation project, create a loop to check all the users in your data source checking for only new accounts. You can do this by checking for the student ID, or your identifier, if that is in AD go to the next record, if it’s a new record that needs to be in AD, create the account, create a home folder, create a profile path, create an email account, etc.

Step 3
With another UMRA Automation project, get all the student accounts in Active Directory and run them against the data source of students. If a user is in AD and in your SIS, then run a compare, check firstname, lastname, location etc. If a user is not in the right location, or grade move the account. Strip group membership; reapply group memberships based on new location, move home drives, and email mail stores if needed.

Step 4
Now that you have all your processes really, create 1 main UMRA Automation project to call your smaller projects in succession.

I hope this gives some of you out there an idea of how to get your students from Zangle into Active Directory.

UMRA – Active Directory Automation Error Handling at 8:17 PM

If you haven’t already, please read my first post on where and how to download a trial version of User Management Resource Administrator, developed by tools4ever. UMRA

Download Trial Version of UMRA > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/
Download Trial Version of SSRPM > http://www.tools4ever.com/download/

UMRA – Active Directory Automation Error Handling

By now after reading and following my posts you should have some idea of how to create a
UMRA Automation project to automate student or staff account creation, or running account audits on your Active Directory. Now, we all know that your UMRA Automation projects sometimes will throw errors for different reasons, and depending on how many accounts or Active Directory objects you are trying to provision, your UMRA Automation logs can get quite large. I often find myself sometimes, running a UMRA Automation project that handles over 20k student accounts, and wont know if the UMRA Automation project threw and error until it is completely done, thus having four or five UMRA log files to search through, make this a little tuff sometimes, to figure out where it threw and error and why. So in this blog I will talk about ways to step up your UMRA projects to include some error handling, to show you what UMRA Automation project actually threw the error, and any other information in that script.

UMRA – AD Automation Error Handling How To

So I will keep this at a high level so you can get an idea of how you can take this UMRA Automation Error Handling and Error Logic and integrate it into other projects you might have.
What I will do is first create two non script items in my UMRA Automation project, one will be called “Error” the other is “No Error” within the 2 no action items, you will drag and drop a “Export Variables” action, this action will export to a file either on your desktop, or folder somewhere, the UMRA Automation project name, and then any variables you want to during and error. So for example if you have a project called “Student Creation” You can export the name, and maybe a studentid, or accountname when you throw this error, this way you can look into the account, or action and figure out what is going on. Now, you take this same approach on all the UMRA Automation projects you build, and now when you run your larger projects, you will have log file of what UMRA Automation projects threw and error, who it was on, and a even a datetime of when they happened.

Below is a quick screen show of how you can implement this UMRA Automation Error Handling into your projects.