We’ve been looking this week at Web Active Directory’s new PeopleProvision solution for automating and delegating the Active Directory account creation process. Today we present the final post of our blog series and look more closely at PowerShell’s role in the PeopleProvision platform. PowerShell empowers PeopleProvision to deliver the most business value by providing extensibility and customization for the unique account creation needs in your organization.

In the first three posts, we looked at common software implementation practices that raise costs through expensive implementation services, examined the PeopleProvision user experience, and discussed the keys to implementing PeopleProvision quickly. Now it’s time to glue together all these pieces with PowerShell.

PowerShell, Microsoft’s command shell and scripting platform for system administration, acts as the engine that makes PeopleProvision go. In essence, the PeopleProvision solution includes a best practice-based web front end with powerful provisioning rules, a simple-to-implement deployment scheme, and a back end work horse comprising PowerShell cmdlets and scripts. Data collected through the front end gets processed through the rules and then passed on to PowerShell to do the real work.

The default PowerShell scripts in PeopleProvision complete a ton of tasks for you during the user creation process.

• Create Active Directory user accounts
• Set AD user properties
• Create Exchange mailboxes
• Create user home shares and map local drives
• Set profile and logon script paths
• Add users to groups

It doesn’t stop there, though. Using PowerShell, you can extend PeopleProvision to accomplish a host of other tasks. Need to create an Active Directory contact for the new account? No problem! PowerShell can do that. Want to send an email to the new user account’s manager once the account is created? PowerShell can handle that, too. In fact, PowerShell enables you to customize PeopleProvision to handle a slew of business processes…you’re only limited by your imagination!

WebAD provides assistance getting you up and running with the default PowerShell scripts shipped with PeopleProvision. You can take it from there or engage WebAD—or any other provider you’d like—to further customize your provisioning process. You don’t have to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to get powerful provisioning with PeopleProvision and PowerShell on your side!