21.1 Creating a Simple User Account

You can quickly create a user account with minimal attributes with ADSI. The following code shows how to create a user in an NT domain, a local computer, and an Active Directory domain.

Option Explicit
Dim objDomain, objUser
'Creating a user in a Windows NT domain

Set objDomain = GetObject("WinNT://MYDOMAIN")
Set objUser = objDomain.Create("user","vlaunders")
objUser.SetInfo

'Creating a local user on a computer or member server
'Valid for Windows NT/2000/2003
Set objComputer = GetObject("WinNT://MYCOMPUTER,Computer")
Set objUser = objComputer.Create("user","vlaunders")
objUser.SetInfo

'Creating a user in Active Directory
Set objDomain = GetObject("LDAP://cn=Users,dc=mycorp,dc=com")
Set objUser = objDomain.Create("user","cn=vlaunders")
objUser.Put "sAMAccountName", "vlaunders"
objUser.Put "userPrincipalName", "vlaunders@mycorp.com"
objUser.SetInfo

The code is composed of three sections. The first two sections use the WinNT provider to create a user account in an NT 4.0 domain, and in a computer that could be a member server or part of a workgroup. The third section uses the LDAP provider to create a user account in an Active Directory domain.

When you create users in an Active Directory domain, you need to be aware of two important User object attributes: sAMAccountName and userPrincipalName. The User object has several mandatory attributes. The system sets many of these mandatory attributes, except for one, sAMAccountName, which allows Active Directory-based clients to interact with older clients and NT domains. You must set the sAMAccountName attribute before you call IADs::SetInfo or the creation will fail. The userPrincipalName attribute isn't mandatory, but it is recommend so users can log on using an email-style address as defined in RFC 822 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc822.txt).