Automating Home Directory and Profile paths

Question

Hello,

We are evaluating Adaxes as a replacement for our existing AD management interface. As a result, we are looking at how Adaxes can simulate or replicate the existing functionality of our current management system.

I have been experimenting with using business rules to automate the creation of home directories and user profiles paths. All user data for our students is stored under...

\\server\COMStudentWork\

Further to this, the parent OU of the a user defines the remaining part of the path, for example, a user named 'sheldon.cooper', under the AD structure CN=sheldon cooper,OU=Senior 4,OU=Students,OU=COM,OU=Establishments,DC=company,DC=pri

should have a home directory path...
\\server\COMStudentWork\Senior 4\sheldon.cooper

I suppose that I could have serveral business rules, one for each parent OU, with a hard coded path, but I was wondering if it would be possible to perform it automatically, based on the OU that the user is created in.

Whilst researching this functionality / problem, I used this post as a guide...

Filling "Department" attribute based on OU name

However, even having an (1st) action in a business rule that sets 'ou' property of the new created user, when a subsequent (2nd) action runs under the rule business rule that set the user home directory path based on \\DC\COMStudentWork\%ou%\%username%, it still results on an actual path created like... \\DC\COMStudentWork\\%username% (notice the missing OU entry).

Apologies if this description of our problem is confusing. I am more than happy to provide further information if required.

regards and thanks,

Jay Paterson

Comments

Hi Jay,

If you are using the script to set the department property based on the parent OU then home directory path should be:
\\DC\COMStudentWork\%department%\%username%

However if you are trying to do both in a single step I believe the %department% will not have refreshed in time for the create home drive to work correctly.

How are you adding the users, is it possible to add the department in when you import the users?

Answer 1

Hello,

The problem is that value references (e.g. %department%) are resolved only once for all actions/conditions.

I suggest you create user home directories using a script:

$drive = "Z:"
$accessPermissions = "ADM_USERACCESSPERMISSION_FULL"
$inheritParentPermissions = $False
$setUserAsOwner = $True

$parent = $Context.BindToObject($Context.TargetObject.Parent)
$parentName = $parent.Get("name")
$path = "\\server\COMStudentWork\$parentName\%username%"

$Context.TargetObject.CreateHomeDirectory($path, $drive,
    $accessPermissions, $inheritParentPermissions, $setUserAsOwner)

For details, see IAdmUser::CreateHomeDirectory.