Entering email addresses for muliple users in Active Directory

[machin05]

Hi,

I need to enter the email addresses for all our staff and students 1000+ within our active directory. For each user their email address will be in the format of %username%@schooldomain.sch.uk

This is a different domain name to the one used by active directory. I was hoping you folks know of a way to update user information across the whole domain?

At the moment all users email address field in AD is blank.

So far I've tried using some software call Active User Manager to highlight multiple users in an OU and update the email address field using the %username%@schooldomain.sch.uk, but once that is applied the value of %username% remains, and doesn't change to j.smith etc.

Hope that makes sense, if not fire away with your questions!

Any info/advice is greatly appreciated...

Cheers,
Will

[srochford]

What email system? I'm guessing not Exchange because that does it for you (you specify the default form of email and the recipient update policy does magic)

If it's just storing data in the email address field (not creating mailboxes) then it's easy to script it or admod from Joeware can also do this for you - there's an example here to do exactly what you want.

[machin05]

Sorry, forgot to mention our email system is our LA supplied Mymail system, which is a webmail based system.

I will have a look at those links, cheers.

[powdarrmonkey]

It's easy; open Active Directory Users and Computers, select the users you want to update, get their properties, and Email to the variable field you have already used, %username%@restofaddress. ADUC will flesh out the username for you. You're not restricted to the domain name AD uses, it's a free-form field.

[tomscaper]

Out of curiosity why do you want to add the email address in the email line in AD, we also use the mymail system and just wondered what you were planning to do.

[Stuart_C]

It's easy; open Active Directory Users and Computers, select the users you want to update, get their properties, and Email to the variable field you have already used, %username%@restofaddress. ADUC will flesh out the username for you. You're not restricted to the domain name AD uses, it's a free-form field.

Can you? Aw rubbish! I spend about an hour on monday using DSQUERY and DSMOD (and Excel!)to populate the E-mail address field for all our users.

Though having said that your method is only easy if you have your users in a single or limited number of OU's. If there is a large number of OU's then it's probably easier to use DSQUERY to get the distinguished name of all the users then DSMOD to change them so I don't feel so bad.

[CyberNerd]

I set tehm like this when we installed our zimbra server

Set objParent = GetObject("LDAP://OU=Year CC,DC=College,DC=internal")

objparent.Filter = Array("user")



for each objUser in objParent

  'Wscript.Echo "Modifying " & objUser.Get("sAMAccountName")

	objUser.put "mail", objUser.Get("sAMAccountName") & "@email.address"

	objuser.put "targetAddress","SMTP:" & objUser.Get("sAMAccountName") & "@email.address"

	objuser.put "proxyAddresses", "SMTP:" & objUser.Get("sAMAccountName") & "@email.address"


	objuser.put "mailNickname", objUser.Get("sAMAccountName")


objuser.Setinfo

 

    

next

Wscript.Echo "Done ;)"

then ran it on each OU

[CyberNerd]

Out of curiosity why do you want to add the email address in the email line in AD, we also use the mymail system and just wondered what you were planning to do.

If the email is in AD you can use outlook to search and very easily populate external systems such as moodle /various linux servers with that information in AD it's easy to dynamically create mailing groups for class lists etc

[powdarrmonkey]

Though having said that your method is only easy if you have your users in a single or limited number of OU's. If there is a large number of OU's then it's probably easier to use DSQUERY to get the distinguished name of all the users then DSMOD to change them so I don't feel so bad.

Then do a find from the top of your OU tree, search for wildcard, and select the appropriate people from the results.

[srochford]

Then do a find from the top of your OU tree, search for wildcard, and select the appropriate people from the results.

Things like this only work on small networks; my last place had c. 15,000 users in AD. I haven't counted them here but it's easily twice that - selecting them all from a list is non-trivial :-)

[Hokalus]

We use ADModify to do this sort of thing. Just add the OUs you want to process, tell it what you want to change and it's done in seconds.

[machin05]

Cheers for all the replies folks.

I want to update the email line in AD for use within Moodle. We're in the process of setting it up for our school and you can use that field to auto-complete users for the first time they log into moodle.

I will have a look at the different methods for updating AD info that you all have detailed and let you know what works for me.

I know this might sound antiquated, but we're still running a Win2000 AD so i believe selecting multiple users is a no-no.

Peace

[machin05]

OK,
very quick update.

Selecting multiple users works when done from an XP workstation using the Windows 2003 Admin Pack

BUT

I've just realised that our staff user names are in the format of j.blogs but our email address are jblogs@schoolname.bham.sch.uk. Therefore using the %username% tag will enter the incorrect email address.

Any ideas on a quick way around this. Maybe using excel files to export, remove the full stops, then update the AD containers?

Cheers,
Will

[powdarrmonkey]

You won't be able to do it natively, you'll have to extract and import as you say.

[machin05]

You won't be able to do it natively, you'll have to extract and import as you say.

Thought as much.

Any pointers or example scripting will be of great help as my own scripting experience has been gathered on a very ad hoc basis.

I can export a list of the users an use excel formula to remove the full stop and append the domain name, but then importing the new values to the correct containers in ad.... GULP!

Cheers,
Will