Hey everyone, I'm wondering if anyone has successfully automated their onboarding process using custom scripts and tools they've developed in-house. I'm specifically facing challenges with a three-step process: first, creating a user and setting their attributes and groups; second, creating a mailbox on-premises, which can take 10-20 minutes for the sync between our remote and headquarters data centers; and third, migrating that mailbox to Office 365, which also has a similar sync time. The tricky part is that while on-prem operations require domain credentials, Office 365 actions require Azure AD logins. What tools or strategies have you found helpful in streamlining this process as much as possible? Some of our current workflows involve multiple clicks, which can easily lead to forgetting things after waiting around for a while.
6 Answers
Absolutely! I put together a Power App frontend for HR to handle new hires and terminations, and it interfaces with Azure Automation runbooks to manage scripts on the back end. It was a massive project for me, and I genuinely enjoyed every moment of it!
I’ve got a PowerShell script that takes a CSV file, creates the AD user, updates local security groups, and sets on-prem attributes. After that, I use Start-AdSyncSyncCycle to make sure the account and mailbox get set up in Azure/M365 reliably. I put a timer in my script to wait for about 20 minutes while the mailbox is provisioning, then I assign distribution groups and send out an email with all the user account details to supervisors and IT. It’s been handy!
Just a heads up, some recent security changes mean that only Domain Admins can run the manual adsync now, so keep that in mind if you're planning on sharing your script around.
I’ve set up my script to create accounts directly at our primary domain controller where all those important roles are. I've got a separate job that syncs all the DCs every 5-8 minutes. However, I’ve been thinking: why not let mailboxes provision directly in the cloud instead of going through on-prem? That would simplify things quite a bit. Also, my Azure AD Sync runs every 15 minutes, so not sure if that’ll help you or not!
We deal with a bunch of legacy systems that still depend on on-prem Exchange for SMTP. Sure, moving to the cloud sounds great, but these systems wouldn’t recognize the cloud addresses right now.
Just curious, have you considered changing how often the DCs replicate? There’s a registry key you can set to make them sync every 30 minutes by default!
Consider using workflows that can perform actions via API or webhook. You can even program in a delay between steps. I built a tool called Siit with native onboarding workflows that trigger straight from HR systems, and it helps streamline the entire process!
I developed a script with a GUI for creating accounts that not only sets up the account and assigns licenses but also checks the department and adds users to relevant distribution lists and SharePoint sites based on an updated CSV of managers. It’s really streamlined our process!
The key isn't merely speeding up the sync process; it’s about designing your automation to know when to pause and check states during execution. That way, you avoid those moments where a human forgets to continue after a wait—it really helps reduce errors and keeps everything on track!
That sounds solid! But what if you structured your script to check for the mailbox’s status instead of just waiting? Could save some time for you.