Bulk Modify Basics

Getting Started

Before using Bulk Modify you should learn how to use Bulk Password Control as this is the tool from which you launch the Bulk Modify dialog. Bulk Password Control provides you with the tools you need to select the user accounts to modify. For example you can select all the users in a group, organizational unit or you can use a custom or pre-defined query. You can also enter a list of user accounts or load users from a text file.

Once you have the list of user accounts you want to modify, click the "Modify Attributes" button.

The "Bulk Modify" dialog pictured above has been designed to look similar to the user dialog in Active Directory Users and Computers - this will make it easier foy you to find the attributes you want to modify as the user interface is already familiar to you.

You will find that the textboxes that you normally use to enter information are disabled in the "Bulk Modify" user interface. If you want to modify an attribute you will need to select the checkbox located to the left of the textbox. Once the checkbox has been checked you will be able to enter data into the textbox - this also provides a signal to the application that the attribute selected is to be modified. Most checkboxes also have an intermediate state (The checkbox is checked but also grayed out) that is used to clear the attribute. If you enter a zero length string into the textbox this will not clear the attribute and normally results in a failed attribute modification.

The ability to modify attributes in bulk would be of limited use without some additional intellegence. For example, you might want to specify that the Display Name attribute is set to "Surname, Firstname" or specify the user profile path to be "\\server\share\username". This is where XML Placeholders come in. XML Placeholders allow you to do all of the above plus text find and replacement and other forms of string manipulation. Some common options are automatically entered for you by various hyperlinks in the application. See the section on XML Placeholders for more information.

Applying Changes & Viewing Results

Once your modifications have been made, click the "OK" button to apply your modifications. The progress of the bulk update is monitored in the status bar or Bulk Password Control. Once the update has completed a "Bulk Modify Results" dialog box is shown.

The Bulk Modify Results dialog allows you to see the results of the modification, highlighting any errors or warnings. Detailed results are logged in an XML log file, including the original values for the attribute, the new values and the success or failure of each attribute modification. The "Detail" tab of the "Bulk Modify Results" tab provides a convenient method to view the information in the log file without using a 3rd party XML editor. You can also apply filters to view only the items of information you are interested in - failed modifications for example.

The error pictured above occurred because there was another user with the same common-name in the users organizational unit and conflict resolution was not specified. If conflict resolution had been specified, a number would have been appended to the common-name to make it unique and the result would have been set to "Warning".

Note:
The filters apply to the overall result for the user. If multiple modifications are made the user result is the most negative result. For example if two modification were made where one succeeded and one failed, the user overall result would be failure.

Rollback

The XML log files provide a method of rolling back changes if there is a problem with a modification. For example, you might have applied a modification to a number of user accounts that should have been excluded from the modification.

To undo changes made you can simply click the "Rollback" button - user account attributes will be returned to their origional values. Once the Rollback is complete, a second "Bulk Modify Results" dialog box will be displayed (titled "Rollback Results").

If you have already closed the "Bulk Modify Results" dialog you can open it again by clicking the "Rollback Modifications" option in the "Bulk Modify" menu. You will also need to click the "Open Log File" button to select the correct log file. By defaut log files are stored in a "PasswordControlLog" folder in "My Documents". You can change the location of the log files by clicking the "Config" option in the "Bulk Modify" menu.

Note:
The rollback option provides a level of security when making bulk modifications to Active Directory but it is NOT guarrenteed to be foolproof.
If the program is ended before modifications have been completed (powercut etc), the log file may be incomplete. This will cause problems when you try to open the log file. In this situation you would need to add closing XML tags to the log file to ensure that it is well formed.
It's advisable to have a recent backup of your directory before making any bulk modifications.

Viewing Changes in Bulk Password Control

Changes to user account attribute might not be shown when you return to the Bulk Password Control dialog. To view changes, click the "Refresh" option in the file menu. You can also enable the "Bulk Modify auto refresh" option in the config. Click "Config" in the Bulk Modify menu. If you enable the auto refresh option there will be a decrease in perfromance when making attribute modifications.

Bulk Modify Tabs

General Address Account Profile Telephones Organization
Remote Control Terminal Services Profile Other
Logon Hours Member Of Dial In Environment Sessions

General

Display Name and Common-Name attributes have hyperlinks to automatically insert XML placeholders to produce either a "FirstName LastName" or "LastName, FirstName" combination.

Common-Name attribute must be unique within its container (organizational-unit). A combination of First Name and Surname could produce duplicate values. The attribute modification will fail if a duplicate value exists in the same container unless the "Conflict Resolution" option is used. The "Conflict Resolution" option will append a number to the end of the common-name if required to make it unique. The result of the modification will be "Warning" rather than failure.