Active Directory Reporting Software

Active Directory (AD) is a Microsoft suite of services designed to help you manage users, objects, and domains in a network environment. With AD, you can organize users into groups, give those groups access privileges to specific directories, and leverage a hierarchical structure for setting privileges.

You can use Active Directory to gain visibility into network activity and gain a complete understanding of how users are interacting with it and how current permissions are set. However, you may also need to see specific subsets of information, like a list of any new user accounts that currently exist. To easily find, organize, and display this information, you can use AD reporting. 

There are many kinds of AD reports, from Active Directory user reports, to IT compliance reports, to a wide variety of permissions reports regarding group policy objects and folders accessible by users and groups.

Some Active Directory permissions reporting can be done manually via scripts in PowerShell. You might want to pull a report on inactive user accounts, newly created users, or some other useful AD information, and PowerShell makes this possible. However, without an automated tool, you’ll need to create your own PowerShell scripts or find them online. After you run the script, the resulting reports should be in Excel or HTML format.

While useful, PowerShell has its limits. Although you can use PowerShell to pull user and group permissions from Active Directory, it’s often not scalable or fast enough to meet the IT needs of a growing enterprise. For scalability and ease of use, it’s best to use a third-party tool to get a report from Active Directory. 

With the AD reporting tools in SolarWinds Access Rights Manager, you can more easily generate customizable reports to pull the information you need. For instance, you can use a report to view user permissions and more easily identify security risks. ARM includes PowerShell scripting, but also provides automated templates so you don’t have to spend time figuring out what script is right for your needs. 

In addition, ARM generates compliance reports and can automatically send them to auditors or internal stakeholders at any time. For more information about the specifics of creating Active Directory user reports in ARM, consult this documentation.