Chapter 4. Programmatic User Account Manipulation

In the majority of enterprises , the mundane workflow processes are those most prone to process omission errors. Using programmatic methods , development-savvy administrators can create workflow applications that perform all of the actions required to create a new account, thus eliminating errors resulting from process omission.

To help you develop these administrative workflow applications, this chapter explores programmatic manipulation of user account properties, including the following:

Managing and manipulating user account properties
Manipulating the user environment profile
Manipulating user logon hours and workstations
Manipulating the user parameter field

You will also use ADSI to expose the values assigned to properties that cannot be manipulated using standard GUI tools, such as the times of the user's last login and logoff .

Whether the application to be built is part of an existing business process or is simply part of a cache of administrative time saving utilities, Visual Basic and ADSI provide an incredibly robust platform on which to build your next administrative automation project.

Finally, in this chapter you will continue the creation of the NTAdmin.DLL COM server application you started in Chapter 3, "Container Enumeration Methods and Programmatic Domain Account Policy Manipulation"

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