Importing Active Directory Groups

Within Adept, you can connect users and groups from your Active Directory.

To get started, go to the **System** tab on the ribbon. Click **User Groups Libraries**.

Here, you’ll see a list of groups, groups that aren’t in the library, and a group of users.

You see groups that aren’t in the library because you don’t have a library selected. Once you select a library, groups move from this area over to that area.

For now, get out of here. Go back to the top-right section of your panel.

To add a group from Active Directory, right-click in this area. Go down to **Active Directory**, and choose **Import Groups**. You can also import users, but for this demonstration, import groups.

Now, you can search in this location. Change it to your domain. Then you can search your entire domain.

You can type in a group name, then check the names. If the group is found, you can click **OK** to import that group.

There’s another way. Go under **Advanced**. If you don’t remember the group name, click **Find Now**.

This shows a list of users and groups you can pick from.

If you know the information, type in the name of your group and click **Check Names**.

When you press **OK**, you’ll see the group in this panel. Select it to see all the users in that group.

You’ll see three users are part of this group. It also tells you, in this section on the left, for the login name, you must add the user first.

This means, once you add all your users, come back and add a group. This will bring in the login names because they’re already inside Adept.

If it's not there, that's fine.

You don't have to do it first.

What you can do is click **OK** here.

Now, the group is inside Adept, but there aren't any users in that group yet. See, this is your group and there are no users listed.

Depending on how your environment is set up, maybe you want all users who are part of this group to be added automatically. You can do that by allowing Adept to synchronize accounts from Active Directory.

So, click **OK** here, since you've already added your user or group. Then, go up to the oval icon and click **Options**.

Here, you'll see **Database and Logins**. This is where your domain is, and where you’re pulling in the group. If you have multiple domains, you’ll see them listed here, but you can only select one at a time.

If you add groups or users from other domains, make sure this is your main or primary domain. That's important for notifications to go out to users and for Active Directory, or for users to make login requests so their account can be validated.

There's another setting under **Active Directory**. Here, you can enable polling. This will automatically check every so often to see if there are new users, or if user accounts or usernames have changed.

It also checks email addresses and notifications.

You can also choose **Enable Change Notifications** for workflows and other actions to send change notifications to the specified email address.

At the bottom, there’s an option to create new Adept user accounts. So, when a new user is found in Active Directory, do you want it to automatically pull in those user accounts? That’s what this option does.

Since you created the group but didn’t import the users first, go ahead and check this box. Also, turn on polling so a new user will be added once Adept notices that the group has changed.

Maybe something in this group changed between Active Directory and Adept.

So, go ahead and select **OK**.

Now, on the **System** tab, you can start polling.

It tells you that a new polling service has started. Now, you can either **Stop** or **Synchronize**.

Once you start polling, it's always running until you manually stop it.

**Synchronize** lets you grab any changes made inside that group you connected to Adept.

Next, go back into **User Groups Libraries**.

Now, find your group—it's called **User Group**.

You'll see those three users have been added to your system.

Now that these users exist, you don't have to select them from here. You can go here, and now everyone—all your users, no matter what groups they're in—is in this list at the bottom.

For this demo, just work with one account: **John Doe**.

Before you go in, notice John Doe has a type of **Not Set**. So this user isn't a desktop user, a web user, or an administrator. It's just a user account pulled in from Active Directory with no permissions yet.

So, you need to go into this user account and assign permissions.

Here, you see the user's name and their login.

The email address wasn't stored in Active Directory, so that information didn't pull over.

This is the domain where this user exists.

Down below, you have roles that you can assign to this user.

Now, go back to your group so you can narrow your search for the user you're looking for. In this user group, you can see the other two users brought in by Active Directory don't have any permissions, so they won't be able to log in.

Even though their user accounts exist, they can't log into the system yet until they receive permissions.

The John Doe user is now a system-wide administrator and also has a desktop license.

Whenever you see a user account that's part of Active Directory, you'll notice the icon. If you go down to the same user, you'll see the icon has a key next to it and the user has a red shirt facing left. That means it's an Active Directory user.

The user with the blue shirt facing right is an Adept user.

If you go into this person's account, you'll see they're not coming from Active Directory. That means they're an Adept user.

The user John Doe, the one that's an Active Directory user from the domain, has the ability to be removed from Active Directory and converted into an Adept user account instead.

So, if you right-click on this user and go to **Active Directory**, you can unlink this user from Active Directory.

You'll get prompted asking if you're sure you want to unlink this user from Active Directory. Here, you can say **Yes**.

Now, you'll notice this user has a blue shirt with a key, showing they're an administrator. Notice that **Active Directory** is no longer grayed out.

Even though the domain is still there, this user isn’t linked back to Active Directory.

If you already have a user who’s an Adept user, you can link that user to Active Directory.

In this case, choose **Link**, then find that user in Active Directory.

You’ll need to choose your location, which is the entire domain in this example.

Type in the user’s name, then click **Check Names**. That links the account to Active Directory.

Click **OK**.

Now, John is linked back to Active Directory.

The group still shows John as a member.

That’s how you link or import Active Directory groups.

If other users are added to the Active Directory group, once polling happens—currently set for every five minutes—they’ll sync automatically.

Under **Active Directory**, you can control this by entering different values.

If you only want to poll every half hour or twice a day, for example, adjust this time period to fit your needs. Maybe every six hours instead of every five minutes.

That keeps Active Directory and Adept in sync.

And that concludes the video for importing Active Directory groups into Adept.