Directory Manager - Future Features

The response to Directory Manager v1.0 has been great. We had a number of customers and prospective customers that were waiting on the first release since they could not quite trust their users to keep the information updated that they wanted to keep up-to-date. Consequently, we rushed Directory Manager out the door with fewer features than we really wanted. 

We are currently coding on Directory Manager v1.1 and planning for Directory Manager v1.2.  Here is the feature list in roughly the order of priority as well as some things we will be adding in the future.

• Filter out unwanted accounts (such as service and admin accounts)
• Customizable search results (default is currently 100, we are going to make this customizable)
• Add additional attributes to the search column listing on the main page
• Search by more attributes (including extension attributes)
• Configurable base OU (organizational unit) so searches always start at a specific OU
• Export search list to a CSV or XLS file
• Enable / Disable account
• Unlock account
• Reset a user's password for them / force them to change their password at next logon
• Manage contacts (eventually create and delete contacts, too)
• Add / manage photograph attribute (either jpegPhoto, Photo, or thumbNailPhoto attribute)
• Additional reporting / auditing functions such as writing to the Application Event Log or reporting changes via e-mail.
• Group management (add / remove users from group) (This is tricky, by the way)
• Delegate different users the ability to manage different OUs of accounts.  (Short of actually asking the customer to delegate OU permissions in Active Directory and changing our permissions model, we have not figured a way to easily do this. But, we are working on it since this will make Directory Manager a better fit for larger organizations.)

Directory Search

For the last 7 months, we have been tossing back and forth the idea of a Directory Search application that can be used as a company "white pages" application.  Give users the ability to search the Active Directory using a customizable search interface and display only the attributes of the accounts that you want the users to see. 

We are pleased to be finally underway coding this application.  We already have some "base code" for the search functions that was used in the Directory Manager application so we have a good starting point.  Over the next month or two, we will be getting together a working prototype and will publish it to the Web demo site. 

We invite you to provide us feedback on what you organizations would like to see.  Please send us an e-mail to support @ directory-update.com.  This alias goes to EVERYONE, the developers and the company manager. Tell us what would be useful for your company and how you would use it. We promise to seriously consider every suggestion.