What is our primary use case?
My main use case for One Identity Active Roles is user provisioning and group administration, workflow automation, access management, and employee onboarding and offboarding processes. When a new employee joins, One Identity Active Roles automatically creates the account, applies the correct policies, assigns role-based security groups, and routes approval if required.
The main focus of how I use One Identity Active Roles is user management through onboarding and offboarding, lifecycle management, access control, and reducing manual administrative effort through automation.
The automation capabilities are one of the strongest features of One Identity Active Roles. I mainly use them for user onboarding, offboarding, group assignments, and access approval workflows. For example, when a new employee joins, the account creation and non-role-based group assignments happen automatically through predefined workflows, reducing manual work, improving consistency, and helping minimize provisioning errors, making identity management much more efficient and controlled.
The main use case is automation of processes such as employee user management, onboarding, and offboarding. The automation process makes these tasks smooth and fast, allowing administrative work to be reduced and time to be saved.
What is most valuable?
The best features One Identity Active Roles offers in my experience include workflow automation, delegated administrations, user provisioning, de-provisioning, role-based access control, auditing, and hybrid Active Directory management. A workflow engine is especially valuable because it automates repetitive tasks such as onboarding, offboarding, and access requests, which saves time and reduces manual errors. I also appreciate the delegated administration features because they allow teams to handle specific tasks without giving full AD privileges, improving both security and efficiency, while the auditing and reporting capabilities are very useful for compliance.
Workflow automation has reduced repetitive manual work through onboarding, access requests, and account management, while delegated administrations allow support teams to handle routine tasks without full AD access. This has improved efficiency, reduced bottlenecks, and strengthened security through better access control and auditing.
I would like to highlight the auditing and reporting features of One Identity Active Roles because they provide good visibility into changes and help with compliance and troubleshooting. The fine-grained delegation and centralized management across Active Directory and cloud environments are also very valuable in our day-to-day activity.
One Identity Active Roles has impacted our organization positively because the biggest benefit has been reducing manual administration through automation and standardized workflows. Tasks such as onboarding, offboarding, group assignments, and access requests are now much faster and more consistent than before, thus helping create a more structured identity management process across the organization.
There are several positive outcomes since implementing One Identity Active Roles. Overall, the biggest gains have been time saving, improved consistency, reduced manual error, and better operational efficiency rather than a direct headcount reduction.
What needs improvement?
There is room for improvement in One Identity Active Roles. Based on my experience using it for the last two years, I see potential for a more modern UI, simpler workflow customization, and easier reporting. While the product is very capable, managing complex workflows and hybrid environments can sometimes require deeper expertise than expected, so better cloud integration and troubleshooting visibility would also be valuable improvements.
In terms of needed improvements, I would like to see enhancements around the reporting dashboard and cloud-focused management features. While the core functionality is strong, most of the improvements I would like to see are around usability, visibility, cloud management, and making advanced features easier to configure and maintain rather than major gaps in the product itself.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using One Identity Active Roles for the last two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
One Identity Active Roles is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
One Identity Active Roles is definitely scalable. I purchased this for its scalability and have seen its ability to handle increasing numbers of users, groups, access requests, and administrative tasks without major issues. The automation and delegation administration features help a lot because they reduce the workloads on administrators.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support is quite good.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before switching to One Identity Active Roles, user and access management was mainly handled through native Active Directory tools, manual processes, and a few scripts. As the environment grew, those methods became hard to manage and audit, so I adopted One Identity Active Roles to automate routine tasks, improve delegations, strengthen governance, and reduce manual effort.
How was the initial setup?
I would say the integration of One Identity Active Roles with our existing IT infrastructure and directory services was very straightforward overall, especially because our environment was already based on Active Directory and Microsoft services. The initial integration with Active Directory was relatively smooth, and One Identity Active Roles fit well into our existing identity management process, designed to work across AD, Entra ID, and Microsoft 365, which helped simplify administrations in our hybrid environment.
What about the implementation team?
I did not purchase One Identity Active Roles through AWS Marketplace, as I use AWS as a part of our hybrid cloud environment, but the licensing and procedure were done directly through our organization's standard software procurement process rather than through the AWS Marketplace.
What was our ROI?
I have seen a positive return on investment mainly through time savings and operational efficiency. While I do not have exact financial figures, a good example is onboarding and user provisioning. Before One Identity Active Roles, creating accounts, assigning groups, and validating permissions was largely manual work, taking around twenty to thirty minutes per user, but with automated workflows, that process now takes just a few minutes for standard requests.
I have utilized the fine-grained permissions control and delegated administration features quite extensively. One of the biggest impacts has been supporting the least privileged principle by allowing users and teams to perform only the specific administrative tasks they need without giving broad Active Directory access. For example, help desk teams can handle password resets and account unlocks, while application owners can manage only their own groups and resources.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
In my experience, the pricing is at an enterprise level, but the setup and licensing were justified by the automation and governance features. Setup required planning and configuration, but licensing was straightforward, and the long-term operational benefits provided good value.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated Microsoft Native Active Directory tools, ManageEngine ADManager Plus, and some identity governance platforms such as SailPoint. I selected One Identity Active Roles because of its automation, delegation administration, auditing, and strong Active Directory management capabilities.
What other advice do I have?
For others considering One Identity Active Roles, my advice would be to first check your user management process and how onboarding and access management would be taken care of before deployment, starting with key automation use cases. If implemented properly, One Identity Active Roles can save a lot of administrative effort while improving security and compliance, so it is important to clearly define your governance model, roles, and approval processes before deployment.
My experience with delegated administration has been very positive. Before One Identity Active Roles, most routine requests had to go through senior Active Directory administrators, which often created delays and bottlenecks. Now, with delegated administrations, I can assign specific responsibilities to help desk teams, application owners, or business units without giving them full AD privileges. For instance, help desk staff can handle password resets and account unlocks, while certain teams can manage their own group's membership, significantly improving workflow because routine requests are resolved faster, reducing the workload on senior administrators and controlling access more securely through the least privilege model.
One Identity Active Roles offers automation capabilities that are among the strongest features available. I mainly use them for user onboarding, offboarding, group assignments, and access approval workflows. For example, when a new employee joins, the account creation and non-role-based group assignments happen automatically through predefined workflows, reducing manual work, improving consistency, and helping minimize provisioning errors, making identity management much more efficient and controlled.
This review has received an overall rating of eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.