Active Directory contact management tool | Create, modify, and delete AD contacts

Creating contacts in Active Directory

Active Directory (AD) contacts include information about a person or business, such as phone numbers, email addresses, and fax numbers. Creating and managing AD contacts is vital for organizations, as contacts can be listed in a Global Address List (GAL) or another address list, allowing users to access contact information and send messages. While it's easy to manage a handful of contacts using Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC), it becomes exponentially more difficult when there's an increase in the number of contacts, prompting a need for bulk management tools.

How to create contacts in Active Directory using ADManager Plus

ADManager Plus is a simple Active Directory management and reporting tool that eases the process of creating and managing contacts. Some of the AD contact management operations that can be done using ADManager Plus include:

Creating a single contact.
Creating bulk contacts.
Creating contacts using drag-and-drop, customizable templates.
Creating contacts by setting mandatory attributes.
Modifying contacts in bulk.
Performing contact management actions from reports.
Automating contact operations.

Single contact creation

ADManager Plus helps you create an Active Directory contact object - in one shot, with all the Active Directory contact attributes configured in a single step. Using the contact creation templates, you can:

Create and use templates to assign values to attributes while creating AD contacts.
Configure mandatory attributes as and when AD contacts are created.
Create a contact in any container in your environment.

After you create Active Directory contact objects using ADManager Plus, you'll never want to use ADUC again.

Bulk contact creation

With its bulk AD contacts creation feature, ADManager Plus allows you to import contacts in Active Directory using a CSV file. The solution eliminates the time-consuming process of creating individual contacts and using command tools, making AD contact management simple, flexible, and trouble-free.

Template-based contact creation

Active Directory administrators are frequently faced with situations where they have to assign specific values to certain attributes; they need to prevent a user from entering a value for some attributes, or they must remove or hide unnecessary attributes. Such freedom in contact management isn't possible with native Active Directory tools, not to mention the fact that it requires complex scripting.

ADManager Plus, on the other hand, allows you to create and use contact creation templates, which help you choose the required attributes and assign specific values to these attributes-- all in one single step. These templates can be used to create a single contact, or you can create multiple contacts in one shot.

Bulk contact modification

Making modifications to Active Directory (AD) contact objects by changing their attributes is a task that administrators cannot avoid. When changes have to be made to multiple attributes for multiple contacts, it can become a rather time-consuming task.

ManageEngine ADManager Plus provides a bulk contact modification capability that helps you make changes to attributes of multiple contact objects in a single step. Some of the attributes that can be modified using ADManager Plus include:

Address/Organizational Attributes: Title, Department, Company, Manager, Postal Address

Contact Attributes: Email, Webpage, Description, Telephone Numbers

Naming Attributes: Name, Display Name format

You can delete one or multiple contacts from AD in a single step. Additionally, you can recover the deleted AD contacts in bulk.

Performing contact management actions from reports

ADManager Plus enables you to generate in-depth AD contacts-related reports including all contacts, mail-enabled contacts, and recently created, modified, or deleted contacts. You can perform AD contact management operations right from these reports and schedule them to be delivered to your inbox at a specific time.

Automating contact operations

With ADManager Plus' powerful automation module, you can even automate the routine contact management actions to create, delete, move contacts and add to remove contacts from groups automatically.

FAQs

Follow these steps to create a contact in AD using ADManager Plus.

Launch ADManager Plus and log in with appropriate credentials.
Go to the Management tab and select Create Single Contact under Contact Management.
Select the desired domain and specify the template to create the contact.
Provide all the necessary details for the contact, such as display name, first name, last name, and email address.
Customize any additional attributes or settings as required.
Review the information and click Create for creation of the contact.

ADManager Plus provides the capability to create contacts in bulk in AD. Here's how you can do it:

Launch ADManager Plus and log in with appropriate credentials.
Go to the Management tab and select Create Bulk Contact under Contact Management.
Select the desired domain and specify the template for the contact.
Click Add Contacts to enter the details one by one, or Import a CSV or Excel file with the necessary contact details, including attributes like display name, first name, last name, and email address, and select Next.
Choose or search for the container to create the contacts and select Create Contacts to initiate the bulk contact creation process.
Observe the status of contacts created in AD based on the provided data.