As an administrator, you can leverage EmpowerID to automate the process of deactivating and retiring stale Active Directory user accounts based on your organization’s security policies. Rather than relying on time-consuming and potentially risky manual methods or scripts to mark accounts as inactive, disabling and deleting them based on policy, you can configure a few simple settings in EmpowerID. Not only does this remove the burden and risks associated with other methods, it provides a safety net to mitigate against accidental deletion of any user account by first marking the accounts for deactivation and notifying the managers of those users, as well as other administrators, that the accounts have been identified for cleanup. The managers and administrators must give approval before EmpowerID does anything further with them. If approved, EmpowerID moves those accounts into a designated OU within your Active Directorydirectory, where they remain until their deletion undergoes a multi-step approval process. Accounts not approved for deletion are moved back to their originating OU. Additionally, EmpowerID provides “mock run” capabilities that allow you to generate reports of what would occur in your environment using this feature.
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The below image shows the Directory Cleanup Settings on an example account store.  |
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Process Flow
The process for automating the deactivating and retiring of stale Active Directory user accounts is depicted in the below image. An explanation of the process follows the image.
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Submit Account Terminations workflow
This workflow claims account stores where CleanUpEnabled is set to true and gets the following SetGroup GUIDS from Resource System Config Settings in order to process those groups:
TerminationBeforeProcessingSetGroupGUID — This setting specifies the GUID of the SetGroup containing all people needing to receive notification of a pending move and disabling of a user account.
TerminationNotProcessedSetGroupGUID — This setting specifies the GUID of the SetGroup containing all user accounts to be be moved and disabled.
TerminationProcessedSetGroupGUID — This setting specifies the GUID of the SetGroup containing all user accounts to be terminated. The workflow processes one account store at a time.
If CleanUpReportModeOnly is set to true, all the account processing steps are ignored and the account’s AccountOrganizationStatusID is set to 3 (TerminationPending). This logs everything that the workflow would do if Report Only Mode was turned off.
Else if CleanUpReportModeOnly is turned off and whether CleanUpStaleAccountOU has a valid External OrgZone.
If the CleanUpStaleAccountOU setting on the account store is not valid, the account store is ignored, No accounts will be disabled and moved. Else it continues to claim the accounts and process the claimed accounts.
If the number of accounts in the account store reaches the specified threshold, the SubmitAccTerminationsApproval workflow is invoked.
Else if the number of accounts of the account store is under the ThresholdOnAccounts Resource System Config Setting value, SubmitAccountTerminations workflow moves the accounts to the OU specified by the CleanUpStaleAccountOU setting.
If the DisabledAccountOnMove setting on the Workflow parameters is set to true, the accounts are disabled when moved; else the accounts are not disabled and moved.
When an account is moved, the AccountOrganizationStatusID is set to 5 (Transfer) and the TransferDate is set to current date and time on the account.
Emails are sent to manager and admin after the account is moved. EmailTemplateManagerMoveNotification and EmailTemplateAdminMoveNotification are used as templates to send emails.
The AdminManagementRoleGuids workflow parameter determines which admin users should receive the email notification.
Once the emails are sent, an AssigneeNotification is inserted for that account and will not be claimed again to send notifications before moving accounts.
The accounts claimed earlier for termination will be processed by invoking the Terminate Account Advanced workflow for each account that is to be terminated.
Submit Acc Terminations Approval workflow
This workflow creates an approval task for all accounts belonging to the Management Role specified by the ApprovalApproverManagementRoleGUID parameter of the Submit Account Terminations workflow. At least one user belonging to the Management Role needs to select and approve each account to be terminated.
Once a task is created for an account store, the TaskApprovalPendingStatus Resource System Config Setting is set to true. This prevents the system from recreating the task.
If the task is approved, all accounts selected from the Task Approval Form of the workflow are disabled and moved, and the TaskApprovalPendingStatus setting is set to false.
Terminate Account Advanced workflow
This workflow claims all accounts approved for termination, moves and terminates each one, setting the AccountOrganizationStatusID = 2 (Terminated).
Once an account is terminated, the workflow checks whether the NotifyManager and the NotifyAdminManagementRole parameters are set to true.
If NotifyManager and NotifyAdminManagementRole are set to true, the workflow checks the EmailTemplateManagerDeletionNotification and the EmailTemplateAdminDeletionNotification parameters for the email template that is to be used to send emails to the managers of each terminated user, as well as all admin users belonging to the Management Role specified by the AdminManagementRoleGuids parameter.
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