Automated account enabling and disabling

[Roberto]

Does anyone know of any software that lets low level helpdesk technicians set up groups of accounts to be enabled and disabled on a schedule, possibly several times a day, for accounts used for exams?

I know we can do it via scheduled tasks (not "simple" enough for helpdesk techs) and I know you can do it via ADUC (time not granular enough).

I'm ideally looking for a bit of software that focuses on allowing people to simply select a group of users and give the times to enabled and disable them, rather than a suite of programs that includes this function but all ideas gratefully received.

[Jamman960]

I'm not aware of any such software but rather than enabling/disabling would use of logon times be better suited?

[TheLibrarian]

Your helpdesk techs can't schedule tasks? Not even with a step by step guide on how to schedule tasks?

As long as you provide the scripts to enable / disable the various groups surely the lowliest tech can follow a guide?

[Roberto]

Thanks for your responses folks
@Jamman960 - login times (what I mean when I mentioned 'via ADUC' are not granular enough) are they? AFAIK they can only work on a 'per hour' basis and while I've got no problem telling our exams department that if an exam starts at 10:20 the account will be enabled at 10:00 (or better still, 10:15) I can't really tell them that if the exam starts at 10:50.

@TheLibrarian - yes they can. But something friendlier would be preferred.

[TheLibrarian]

I'm half expecting @Arthur; to turn up now with a good solution, I'm out of ideas though.

[Jamman960]

how important is it that the accounts are entirely inaccessible? would it be acceptable for the machines to be locked/unlocked instead via something like AB Tutor

James

[Roberto]

That's an idea actually. I'll look into that, thanks.

This is a problem we all must face, I know its possible, even sensible, to do it with scripts but I'm also kinda surprised there isn't some nice fancy gui tool to do it all for you...

[Domino]

What about creating a custom mmc for it? Create Taskpads for Active Directory Operations

Delegate control, give them only the enable/disable button, only for the accounts required.

Manual control, less chance of messing something up

[Roberto]

@Domino - that's more or less where we are now, but really these things should be scheduled.