when a user leaves for vacation -i receive an e mail form oracle system [automated] to disable his account is there a way to automate this - to have a triger that will serch in AD and disabled the user withouting having to this manualy for each user ?

There is no way for AD to know the user is on vacation. Any process to modify the user to indicate this, could just as easily disable the user. Also, what will trigger enabling the user when they return? Richard Mueller - MVP Directory Services

see the user will make a process in oracle - this process is set to send an e mail to a cretin user - me - automatically so i can take actin - i was thinking that this e mail could be the trigger about coming back from vacation - the system will know because the user with do the same process

As Richard mentioned, there is no automated mechanism in AD. However, you can automate this process by using a script, schedule task etc. You can trigger a script based on the email, and get the samaccontname or name from the email, search AD, disable the user account. dsquery -name MyUser1 | dsmod user disabled Yes http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781527(WS.10).aspx Santhosh Sivarajan | MCTS, MCSE (W2K3/W2K/NT4), MCSA (W2K3/W2K/MSG), CCNA, Network+| Houston, TX Blogs - http://blogs.sivarajan.com/ This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties,and confers no rights.

There is a possibility that you could use Forefront Identity Manager, but its not easy to setup and usually requires some very specialised skills (contactors) to set it up. Depending on what system you use and how it works it may be possible. For example our users are entered into an oracle database, FIM then picks it up and creates the user account and sets an expiry date based on how long they will be with us so its mostly automated. But as i say, this is not a small easy system and i doubt it would be cheap to setup.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. If you find an answer helpful then please "Vote As Helpful"

There is a possibility that you could use Forefront Identity Manager, but its not easy to setup and usually requires some very specialised skills (contactors) to set it up. Depending on what system you use and how it works it may be possible. For example our users are entered into an oracle database, FIM then picks it up and creates the user account and sets an expiry date based on how long they will be with us so its mostly automated. But as i say, this is not a small easy system and i doubt it would be cheap to setup.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread. If you find an answer helpful then please "Vote As Helpful"