Active Directory Support and Management

Hyena provides extensive Active Directory (AD) support, with built-in tools for directory searching and filtering, management of object properties, security auditing, customizable queries, advanced attribute management, and many other AD mixed and native-mode features.

Due to Hyena's ease-of-use, most AD environments can be managed more efficiently and quickly using Hyena's AD management functions. Hyena has numerous features that you won't find in the standard built-in Microsoft administration tools:

Not every organization can upgrade all its domains all at once. Whether you are using Windows 2000, 2003, 2008 or the latest Windows 2012 release, with Hyena you only need one tool, not a confusing array of different snapins.

The Windows 2000/2003/2008/2012 domain object class allows management of the directory through either the container/OU structure, or by object class: users, groups, or computers. You decide and control how you manage your organization's directory, not the tool.

All management of the display of Active Directory objects are handled entirely by optimized LDAP queries that can be fully customized.  

Organizational Units (OUs) are fully supported and integrated, both for browsing OU contents, as well as for creating new users, groups, contacts, and computer objects directly into an OU. A powerful Find feature is available for any OU, allowing selectable criteria for finding and filtering AD information. OU properties are also available, including full support for management of Group Policy Object (GPO) information.

If Microsoft's optional Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) is installed, Hyena will provide access to both the GPMC interfaces and context menu functions, plus the GPMC reporting options.

Hyena's Filtering Toolbar provides for powerful object filtering when browsing the contents of any OU, including traversing into sub-OUs. Filter by object type or allow everything in the directory to be visible: You choose the level of detail. The powerful traverse feature lets you 'drill down' into selected sub-levels of the directory.

Hyena was the first AD management product to support customizable Active Directory queries at every object level. Define your own queries, or use any of the predefined queries to display custom 'views' of exactly what directory attributes you want to see for organizational units, users, groups, or computers. Hyena's queries can also contain a customized LDAP filter, if desired, for the ultimate in server-side AD filtering and query performance.

With Hyena, you can access and view more common Active Directory attributes than what is available in the native Microsoft tools, including for example, the Employee ID, Employee Type, Building Number, and User Photo attributes. The included Exporter Pro utility now even supports exporting the user photo information back into a binary file.

Moreover, you can add your own custom AD attributes : create customized queries using any attribute created by 3rd-party tools that extend the schema.

Hyena includes an extensive ADSIedit-like capability to manage any Active Directory attribute for one or more directory objects. But unlike ADSI-Edit, Hyena's AD attribute management dialogs are easy to use and understand. Plus, you can define your own attribute sets to be used over and over and visually see what the values are before and after making any changes.

While nearly all Active Directory tools lack any sort of logging capability, Hyena adds this much-needed feature by logging each AD modification or object access, yet also puts you in control of what actions get logged.

Hyena supports the use of the standard shell property pages for management of all Active Directory objects, providing for full MMC-like functionality, while still providing Hyena's legendary ease-of-use and navigation. Hyena also supports the display of the shell context menu for most directory objects, providing access to popular Microsoft functions as well as 3rd-party shell extensions.

Get a handle on managing the new fine-grained password policies and password settings objects in Windows 2008/2012 Server. Don't let this great feature go unused just because Microsoft didn't build any management tools for it. Hyena not only provides simple GUI tools for creating password policies, but also adds new methods of managing them from the directory objects they are assigned to.

Active Directory administrators know how difficult it can be to keep track of delegated security rights. Hyena makes keeping track of this much easier with Active Directory Security Listing views : Just select one or more AD objects, right click, and select List Directory Security. Its that simple.

Hyena provides access to the standard Microsoft Active Directory 'Find' dialog, but adds two important features: The selection criteria can be saved for future or external use, and the objects that are found can be returned to Hyena for further management tasks.

Hyena supports management of Exchange 2000/2003 mailboxes: mailbox creation, deletion, and property modification can all be easily controlled in Hyena's powerful GUI. Hyena also supports basic mailbox functions and Exchange properties administration for Exchange 2010. While the mailbox create/disable functions are only supported on Exchange 2010, the mailbox Properties integration will work on any Active Directory-supported Exchange version, including Exchange 2007.  And, although the installation of Powershell is required for Exchange 2010 mailbox creation, the Exchange Administration tools no longer need to be installed.

As always, Hyena's output window, including any Active Directory displays, can be easily exported or integrated into Hyena's built-in Microsoft Access database. A fast method to directly send any displayed information to Microsoft Excel is also available.