User self-service
Technically, a user account in your company's directory isn't much different from any other personal account. So why do users have to go to great lengths and contact the IT department to change personal information or reset the forgotten password?
The answer is simple. Because they don't have the proper tools. Yes, such tools exist in Microsoft Entra ID and they might look decent on paper, but they aren't flexible – you are stuck with what you have. In Active Directory, tools for self-service are almost non-existent. And here's where Adaxes steps in.
Web interface for self-service
The Web interface of Adaxes is the ultimate tool for all your self-service needs. Essentially, it is an interface to Active Directory, Microsoft Entra ID, Exchange, and Microsoft 365, all-in-one style, that can serve as a self-service portal for your users.
Why bother?
Indeed, why should you even consider implementing a self-service portal in your environment? The short answer – it is efficient and can offload mundane tasks from your IT department. The long answer – in the ideal world, it's better to automate such things... but you can't automate everything, even with Adaxes. You'd love to, we'd love to, but there will always be some non-standard tasks that occur sporadically and have to be done manually.
So why don't you let the users do those tasks without even bothering the helpdesk. Here are some examples.
Group membership self-service
Imagine a user who needs urgent access to something, and that access is granted by being a member of a specific group. With Adaxes, you can streamline how users request group membership for themselves.
They won't need any admin permissions in your directory, and the range of groups they can see and join can be limited as much as you need. For example, you can allow joining only the groups that end with the word Project.
If you feel that the right to join a limited set of groups still gives the users too much freedom, you can configure Adaxes to request approval for each attempt to join a group. The selected approver (be it someone from the IT department or the user's manager) will recieve an email notification, review it, and approve or deny the request. Doesn't take much time and effort at all.
To find out more about approvals in Adaxes check out the Approval-Based Workflow article.
Personal information update
Users get married, and change phone numbers all the time. It makes sense to let them update this information for their directory accounts.
To ensure that users don't get "creative" with their input, you can enforce data validation. Every property of their accounts can have constraints that control which values users can enter. For example, you can configure the Telephone number field to accept input only in a specific format, or the Office field to be a drop-down menu.
And, you don't have to rely on users knowing things. Adaxes lets you add custom hints and tooltips to every field. This way, you will certainly get rid of any ambiguity about filling those fields. The less your users have to remember, the better.
And yet again, all these changes can go through an approval step, where someone with authority (e.g. HR staff) verifies and accepts them in their own Adaxes Web interface.
Password resets
How often do your users forget their passwords? Some of them will inevitably do so. Adaxes accounts for this and offers a mechanism that allows users to reset their passwords from the comfort of the same Web interface.
To find out more about self-service password reset, check out the Self-Service Password Reset article.
Directory search
Your directory is still a collection of your employees, so why not use it as an address book? Adaxes can be used to let your users search for other accounts and quickly find contact information of other employees.
There are plenty of ways how you can limit what information users can see. For instance, Adaxes can show phone numbers only to people from the same department, and only show the email addresses to everyone else.
Delegating custom tasks
Usually, even such a simple thing as deciding to go on vacation requires an employee to go through a bureaucratic hell. With custom commands in Adaxes, users can do it in several clicks. The user simply needs to enter the date when they will return to the office and submit their request.
However, in the background, Adaxes will do all the heavy lifting. An auto-reply will be set for the user's mailbox, their manager and the HR department will be notified, the account will be disabled until the user returns, etc. Such custom commands let your users sort out their issues on their own all while having close to zero permissions in your domain.
Self-service from anywhere
If you find the idea of having a self-service portal appealing, here's one more feature for you. Adaxes Web interface can be exposed to the Internet so that users can access it even if they are working from home.
Is it safe though? Well, Adaxes has plenty of security options that can convince you it is. Of course, there is a robust brute force protection mechanism that can thwart any brute force attempts. On top of that, you can enable multi-factor authentication for Web interface sign-ins. Users will be forced to enter a code from a mobile authenticator app before they are granted access.
Adaxes also supports single sign-on which allows you to streamline the sign-in experience for your users. If you are using an identity provider like Okta or Auth0, you can integrate it with Adaxes. Any attempts to access Adaxes Web interface will be directed to your identity provider and will use its authentication mechanisms.
As you can see, Adaxes offers a lot in one package. The cases where users can and should maintain their own accounts accumulate over hundreds of people. By giving them the opportunity to do so, you eliminate a noticeable proportion of tickets to the company's helpdesk and focus the IT department's efforts on other things that matter. What's more efficient – five people managing a thousand accounts, or a thousand and five people doing the same?
