Adding new Windows users in a PENTA Hosted environment

Owned by Brian Beaulieu (Deactivated)
01 10, 2019

Issue/Symptom/Question

We we need to add a new Windows user account in a PENTA Hosted environment.

Applies To

This article applies to PENTA Hosted customers with PENTA Managed Active Directory.  Customers with their own Active Directory should consult with their internal IT departments on how to add and remove users.

Only Windows accounts with designated access to add/remove/change users will be able to use this process. Other users will received access denied errors.

Resolution/Fix/Answer

Adding a User

  1. From the Remote Desktop server, launch Active Directory Users and Computers.
  2. Locate the folder which has your Windows user accounts. Not all environments are identical but the user accounts should be easy to locate. 
    In the example below the user accounts are in a sub folder called Users, which is in a folder named after the customer's company name.
  3. Right click on the Users folder and select New → User
  4. Enter the user's information.  The username should follow your standard pattern such as first.last, <first initial>lastname or any other common patterns.  No special characters except period is allow in the username.  Click Next when done

  5. Enter the user's password.  Certain customers have special password requirements. Un-check "User must change password at next logon" as that interferes with Remote Desktop.  We do not recommend selecting "Password never expires".  However most organizations are unable to support the processes required to support regularly changing passwords in a Remote Desktop environment.  Contact Penta's Technical Services department if you would like to utilize a web portal for changing passwords.  Click Next when done and then Finish on the final screen.

Adding the User to the Remote Desktop group.

The steps in this section are required to allow access to the Remote Desktop servers. Failure to complete this step results in users being unable to log in!

  1. Locate the Groups folder and then the "Penta RDS" group. Some customers may have a different group name but they should be similar looking.
    Right click on Penta RDS then select Properties
  2. Select the Members tab then click Add
  3. Enter the username you just created in the prior section and click Check Name to verify it is correct.  Click OK when done then OK on the prior screen.