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COMPANY: Radiology Associates of Ocala
INDUSTRY: Healthcare
LOCATION: Ocala, Florida
ABOUT THE COMPANY: Founded in 1973, Radiology Associates of Ocala provides a full range of quality medical imaging services, from simple X-rays to complex imaging such as MRI, PET, and CT scans. They are a locally owned and operated company based in Marion County, Florida, with four affiliated offices for patients’ convenience.
“We were able to generate reports on users’ password status and easily notify users about password expiration.”
Alexis Hogan - Project Manager at Radiology Associates of Ocala.
Radiology Associates of Ocala uses Active Directory (AD) to manage users’ access to network resources. Many of their employees work remotely and access internal HTTPS websites using their AD accounts. In the past, as per organizational policy, the IT team at Radiology Associates of Ocala set password expiration to 90 days. After 90 days, remote users were restricted from accessing the internal website because the IT team had no way of informing them that their passwords were reaching expiration.
Another problem the IT team faced was scanning their AD environment for users with expired passwords. They tried manually auditing AD to find them, but the task was time-consuming and the results were inaccurate.
Moreover, forgotten passwords resulted in increased help desk calls, which affected employee productivity and increased IT expenses. The issue with password expiration only added to the problem.
Alexis Hogan, project manager at Radiology Associates of Ocala, said, “[We were] not able to effectively expire passwords and run reports for active and inactive users for our externally accessed systems. We performed manual audits every 90 days which is very time-consuming.”
Radiology Associates of Ocala began searching for a solution that could both notify users about password expiration and give them the ability to reset passwords. Specifically, they wanted a solution that would be easily accessible for remote users. Based on her experience with ManageEngine's other products, along with ManageEngine's reputation and affordability, Hogan recommended ADSelfService Plus, an integrated self-service AD password management and single sign-on solution.
“The product is very cost-effective for us. No other solutions seemed to quite fit the bill, and having prior experience (years ago) using other ManageEngine products (ADManager Plus) with a much larger company that I previously worked for, I knew that Manage Engine products were reputable and reliable,” said Hogan.
ADSelfService Plus provides predefined reports on users with passwords that are expired or soon to expire. Reports can be generated for a specific group or OU, or for the entire domain. They can also be exported in reusable formats such as CSV, PDF, HTML, and XLS, and sent at scheduled intervals to IT admins, managers, and other interested parties via email.
The password expiration notification feature alerts end users about approaching password expiration dates via email, SMS, or push notification. Alerts can be sent daily, weekly, or any preferred number of days before password expiration.
Armed with the necessary reports and ADSelfService Plus' password expiration notification feature, the IT team at Radiology Associates of Ocala is now able to make users change their passwords before they expire, ensuring employees have uninterrupted access to internal websites and applications.
Another feature that has been hugely beneficial to their IT team is the self-service password reset feature. To ensure that all users utilize the self-service system, Hogan used the force enrollment feature in ADSelfService Plus. Enrollment is the process in which users register themselves for password self-service by providing unique information with which they can be identified. ADSelfService Plus can be configured to display a persistent pop-up on the desktop screen immediately after login, which prevents users from accessing any other part of the desktop until they enroll, effectively ensuring adoption of ADSelfService Plus among users.
Hogan said, “[ADSelfService Plus provided] an extremely easy and convenient method for our external users to access, which encourages/forces them to enroll and use this system in order to continue access. The email notifications and reset emails are also a huge benefit to this process.”
Hogan also heaped praise on the ADSelfService Plus support team: “Overall, the deployment was fairly simple and straightforward, but any issues that arose during design/testing/deployment, the ManageEngine support team came to the rescue, being technically-capable, professional, thorough, and very helpful – in fact, one of the best support teams I have ever worked with in my 10+ years of being in IT.” She added, “Every person who I spoke with seemed to know the product inside and out, having no challenges whatsoever fixing the problem within a short period of time. I would give the ManageEngine support team a 5 out of 5 star rating easily!”
The IT team at Radiology Associates of Ocala noticed improvements right after deploying ADSelfService Plus. “The only changes we noticed were positive—adoption of the users to enroll in and use the system, and being able to run reports for expiring/expired passwords, which were the goals,” Hogan said. Radiology Associates of Ocala was able to generate reports on users’ password status and easily notify users about password expiration. Users were also quick to enroll in the self-service system and now use it for all their password troubles.
ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus is a secure, web-based password reset program for domain users to perform self-password reset, self-account unlock and self-update of personal details in Active Directory. It helps on a large scale to eliminate the leading source of helpdesk calls and associated expenses by automating password resets and account unlocks thereby optimizing employee productivity. Learn more about ADSelfService Plus from our website.
ManageEngine provides a suite of powerful Enterprise Management products, including network utilization, performance, security, helpdesk management, email archive management and real-time QoS management among others, aimed at making your business more effective and efficient. With a wide array of products that can be easily integrated, enterprise wide optimization is easily possible. Complementary products provide users with the ability to choose and incorporate features that they need a la' carte!
