Service Manager: Using the AD Connector's AD Group Import option to add CI's

Service Manager: Using the AD Connector's AD Group Import option to add CI's

A very efficient way to create CI's in service manager is to use AD Groups. When you select an AD Group to import using an AD Connector, then select the option to "Automatically add users of AD Groups imported by this connector", you can easily control which users are pulled in to Service Manager, without the processing overhead of using a complex query.How you then populate this AD group is up to you. Perhaps you have a user provisioning system, Orchestrator, or plan to use PowerShell to script it.

There is a catch, but it's a very small one. SCSM will only import group members if the selected AD Group scope is set to Universal. When a Global or Local scope type is set, SCSM will sync the connector without errors, but will not enumerate the AD Group membership or create CIs for its members.

While ultimately, you will still need to define some criteria for inclusion of members in this AD Group, you can gain substantially more control over what your AD Connector imports using this technique. Probably the best part however, is that you can modify your inclusion criteria at any time without ever needing to re-create the AD Connector.