Many software vendors and organizations have adopted workflow tools to accommodate their needs towards faster delivery of the same quality. At least, getting an OK from a senior executive, is something that can be automated to save time, right? Another angle a lot of organization explore is Delegation of Control. Why wait for a centralized admin over in India to perform a (small) action, when you can have a super user, HRM executive or concierge to perform it too?

Most organization, however, don’t get very far in their efforts. The reason, mainly, is the lack of understanding of the business by the IT-department, causing a missing policy. Another reason might be, that solutions that offer full workflow capabilities, like System Center Orchestrator, are deemed too expensive. Another big reason is executives might believe they’ll have to be charged more once charge-back is introduced or at least when IT usage becomes more transparent. These organization don’t have much to gain with workflows. Or so it seems.

For these kinds of organizations, Denny from Zohno has created two applications, that can be used to delegate two particularly simple (but often fought over) tasks:

• Hiring new personnel and entering their basic information in the core applications
• Terminating a persons contract and removing the person from the core applications, without information getting lost.

Best of all: these two applications are complete freeware!

Z-Hire

Z-Hire automate IT account creation process including Active Directory account, Exchange mailbox and Lync account. With a click of a button, an Active directory account, Exchange mailbox and Lync account will be created. Traditionally, this process might take over 3 minutes, but with Z-Hire, this can be done in matter of seconds. Features include:

• Active Directory account creation with major attributes
• Active Directory group selection
• Exchange 2007 / 2010 Mailbox creation, support for ActiveSync, Managed folder policy and more…
• Lync 2010 account creation supporting External Policy and Conferencing policies

Download Z-Hire from the TechNet Gallery here.

Z-Term

This application allows IT administrators to automate common tasks when an employee leaves the company. Usually, IT administrators use multiple consoles and perform a variety of tasks to terminate user accounts. Z-Term allows IT administrator to automate:

• Disable the Active Directory account
• Reset the user’s password in Active Directory
• Move the user account to an Organizational Unit (OU) of your choice
• Remove AD Group membership

Note: This action removes the user from all Active Directory groups.

• Change Distribution list ownership (the managedby property)
• Hide the user from Outlook Global address list in Exchange
• Set an Out of Office autoreply of your choice
• Forward the user’s emails to someone else
• And more to come in next version…

Download Z-Term from the TechNet Gallery here.

Both these tools, with proper Delegation of Control (DoC) and Role-based Access Control (RBAC) under the hood, can be used to allow a super user, HRM executive or concierge to hire and/or terminate accounts in a way, even they can remember.