Importing Users from Active Directory

Password Manager Pro integrates with Active Directory in your environment and allows import of users from there. Users logged into the Windows system using their domain account can log into Password Manager Pro directly.

Steps Required

There are three steps involved in importing users from Active Directory.

  1. Importing Users
  2. Specifying Appropriate User Roles
  3. Enabling AD Authentication

To begin, navigate to Admin >> Authentication >> Active Directory. The Active Directory Configuration page is displayed.

1. Importing Users

The first step is to provide credential details and import users from Active Directory. Password Manager Pro automatically gets the list of the domains present under the "Microsoft Windows Network" folder of the server of which the running Password Manager Pro is part of. You need to select the required domain from the list and provide necessary domain controller credentials.

To do this:

  1. Click Import Now. Alternatively, you can also access this from Users >> Add user >> Import from Active Directory.

  2. In the pop-up form that appears, select the required Domain Name, which forms part of the AD from the drop-down.
  3. Specify the DNS name of the domain controller. This domain controller will be the primary domain controller.
  4. In case, the Primary Domain Controller is down, Secondary Domain Controllers can be used. If you have secondary domain controllers, specify their DNS names in comma separated form. One of the available secondary domain controllers will be used. When you use SSL mode, make sure the DNS name specified here matches the CN (common name) specified in the SSL certificate for the domain controller.
  5. Supply Credentials: Enter a valid user credential (user name and password) having read permission in the domain controller. (If you want to import users from multiple domains, you may enter the username as <DomainName>\<username>. For example, if you want to import DOMAIN A users by giving DOMAIN B username/password, you need to enter the username as <DOMAIN B>\username)).
  6. Connection Mode: For each domain, you can configure if the connection should be over an encrypted channel for all communication. To enable the SSL mode, the domain controller should be serving over SSL in port 636 and you will have to import the domain controller's root certificate into the Password Manager Pro server machine's certificate store.
  7. Users to Import: By default, Password Manager Pro will populate all the organizational units (OUs) and groups from Active Directory. If you want to import only a particular user, enter the required user name(s) in comma separated form.
  8. User Groups to Import / OU(s) to Import: Similarly, you can choose to import only specific user groups or organizational units (OUs) from the domain. You can specify the names in the respective text fields in comma separated form.
  9. Synchronization Interval: Whenever new users get added to the Active Directory, there is provision to automatically add them to Password Manager Pro and keep the user database in sync. Enter the time interval at which Password Manager Pro has to query the Active Directory to keep the user database in sync. The time interval could be as low as a minute or it can be in the range of hours/days.
  10. Click Save to save the domain details. During subsequent imports, only the new users entries in AD are added to the local database.
  11. In case of importing organizational units (OUs) and Active Directory groups, user groups are automatically created with the name of the corresponding OU / AD group.

    Note: As mentioned above, to enable SSL mode, the domain controller should be serving over SSL in port 636. If the certificate of the domain controller is not signed by a certified CA, you will have to manually import the certificate into the Password Manager Pro server machine's certificate store. You need to import all the certificates that are present in the respective root certificate chain - that is the certificate of the Password Manager Pro server machine and intermediate certificates, if any.

To import domain controller's certificate into Password Manager Pro machine's certificate store: (you can use any procedure that you normally use to import the SSL certificates to the machine's certificate store. An example is given below)

  1. In the machine where Password Manager Pro is installed, launch Internet Explorer and navigate to Tools >> Internet Options >> Content >> Certificates.
  2. Click Import.
  3. Browse and locate the root certificate issue by your CA.
  4. Click Next and choose the option Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certificate and install.
  5. Click Import again.
  6. Browse and locate the domain controller certificate.
  7. Click Next and choose the option "Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certificate" and install.
  8. Apply the changes and close the wizard.
  9. Repeat the procedure to install other certificates in the root chain.

2. Specifying Appropriate User Roles

All the users imported from AD will be assigned the Password User role by default. To assign specific roles to specific users,

  1. Click Assign Roles Now.

  2. In the pop-up form that opens, all the Users imported from AD are listed.
  3. Click Change role against desired users for whom you wish to change the role and select the appropriate role from the drop down.
  4. Click Save and the required roles are set for the users.

3. Enabling AD Authentication

The third step is to enable AD authentication. This will allow your users to use their AD domain password to login to Password Manager Pro. Note that this scheme will work only for users who have been already imported to the local database from Active Directory.

Troubleshooting tip

The browser will keep on asking for Domain User credentials on the login page if computer account credentials are incorrect. In that case, cancel the pop-up to access Password Manager Pro login page.

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