Access & Setup
The Microsoft Active Directory integration requires some technical expertise for initial setup, so it is recommended to be handled by a system administrator or IT personnel. The step by step instructions can be found below.
Step 1: Within the UnDesked dashboard, navigate to the integrations tab. Click "Configure" under Active Directory and then "Enable Integration."
Step 2: Copy the script from the box.
Note: Script must be customized to fit the needs of your business.
Please review and edit the parts of code for "List of Organizational Units"
You may optionally adjust the storage location of the CSV file.
Step 3: Once you have modified and reviewed the script from step 2, you may run the script via Powershell to ensure the sync is set up correctly. If it is, you will see a notification bubble appear on the integration tab and Active Directory card when you refresh the UnDesked dashboard.
Step 4: Now we will set up the script to run at your preferred interval with Task Scheduler.
First, open up Task Scheduler and click Create Task.
Customize the settings to run the script, and set a trigger to begin the task at your preferred time.
Note: Whichever account is set up to run the task must have adequate permissions to access the relevant Active Directory data.
How it Works
Once an Active Directory integration is set up as described, UnDesked will begin receiving updates from Active Directory. A system administrator will be notified of an update by either the notification icons in the dashboard as pictured below or an update notification email which can be set up discussed later in this article.
Whenever an update is synced from Active Directory, the UnDesked system administrators assigned to that location will have an opportunity to decide what information should flow into UnDesked via a review dialog which can be viewed by clicking “View Updates”.
On this review page you will see updates grouped by dates which represent when these updates arrived. These updates will be labeled with one of 3 labels: New, Deleted, or Updated.
“New” represents a new employee that has been added to Active Directory which will create a new employee with those same traits in UnDesked if that update is approved.
“Deleted” represents that an employee was removed from Active Directory which, if approved, will remove the specified employee from UnDesked as well.
“Updated” represents that some piece of information related to an existing employee in UnDesked has been modified such as their name, email, phone number or department. If an update is approved, these changes will propagate into UnDesked.
For all updates there are two primary choices to make, after which that update will be removed from the review dialog. An update can either be “Approved” or “Ignored”. An approval always represents that you would like UnDesked's employee data to change to reflect a change in Active Directory’s data. When an update is ignored, that always represents that you would like UnDesked's employee data to remain the same despite a change in Active Directory’s data.
For each of these decisions, they can only be made once. If an update is ignored, it will not appear in future updates. However, as long as you have not clicked “Save” on the review dialog, you can revert an “Approve” or “Ignore” choice by pressing the “Undo” button in that row.
Update Notifications & Auto-Approve
This integration was designed with the intention that it should be easy to keep your UnDesked directory up to date which is aided by two additional features: update notifications and auto-approve mode both of which can be accessed through the cog icon on the Active Directory integration card.
When “Auto-Approve” is toggled on, all updates received from Active Directory will automatically be accepted and applied to the UnDesked directory. The idea is that, if you would like a 1-to-1 relationship between Active Directory and UnDesked, you can simply enable this setting and all syncs will go through automatically without any email notifications or UI notification bubbles. It is recommended that you be absolutely sure that you would like the data to sync this way because you are essentially giving Active Directory full privileges to create and delete employees inside of UnDesked without oversight.
When “Update Notifications” is toggled on, a dropdown will appear where you can select the names of system administrators assigned to that location which you would like to have receive email notifications when new data is received from Active Directory and ready for review. This is useful if you or other system administrators log into the dashboard infrequently but would like to ensure that you are keeping your UnDesked directory up to date with Active Directory.