Mail Groups from Classes

[mitchell1981]

Has anyone come up with a good way to extract class lists from the MIS and use the information to create groups in active directory (for mailing lists etc..).

 

Obviously this would have to be redone each year, but if anyone knows a good way to do this it would be very useful to us.

 

Thanks.

[fawkers]

It would be a bit like my solution for parental contacts here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/44528-exchange-2007-mail-contacts-2.html I will try to find two sec's to put my brain in gear and sort somthing like this out.

[jcollings]

We work very closely with these guys

 

::: www.systemhost.co.uk :::

 

They host our sharepoint vle and exchange. As part of that project they wrote a really neat tool (called SIMsync for want of a better name). This takes data from SIMS and creates AD groups based on classes. It runs every day and update memberships in AD, creates new users and adds them to groups and locks accounts of leavers (staff and students). Perhaps worth giving them a call and seeing if it's any use for you.

[mitchell1981]

Thanks for the replies. The SIMsync utility sounds ideal. I will contact them and see what they say. Unfortunately we use CMIS rather than SIMS which could throw a spanner in the works!

[User3204]

As part of our SLG rollout, it has created AD groups for all classes and forms. This does only work for the new accounts it has created, not the original accounts they use, but once the students have gone through the consolidation, which links the two accounts together it would be correct.

 

And then it is just a matter of telling exchange to use the groups as a mailing list, and making sure the user accounts are linked to the email address.

 

I don't use Outlook or Exchange so I don't know how this works....