What is our primary use case?
I have been using One Identity Active Roles for approximately three to four years as a part of my role as a Senior System Administrator, where I gain hands-on experience in implementing and managing One Identity Active Roles for centralized Active Directory administration, including creating and managing access templates, configuring role-based access control, automating user provisioning and de-provisioning processes, setting up approval workflows, enforcing policies, and delegating administrative tasks securely, along with troubleshooting synchronization issues and integration with existing AD infrastructure to ensure compliance, operational efficiency, and reduced manual effort in a large enterprise environment.
My main use case for One Identity Active Roles is to centralize and streamline Active Directory administration by implementing secure delegation, automation, and governance control, where I primarily use it for automated user provisioning and de-provisioning based on HR triggers, applying role-based access control through access templates, enforcing naming and attribute policies, and managing group membership dynamically, along with configuring approval workflows for sensitive access requests to ensure compliance and audit readiness, while also reducing manual intervention for service desk teams when delegated limited administrative rights through One Identity Active Roles by giving direct access to the domain controller, thereby improving security and operational efficiency and consistency across the enterprise environment.
In my daily work, I use One Identity Active Roles to automate user onboarding and offboarding processes, where new users are automatically created with correct permissions, group memberships, and policies based on their role, and during offboarding, accounts are disabled and access removed instantly, which helps me to reduce manual effort, improve accuracy, and ensure better security and compliance.
What is most valuable?
The best features of One Identity Active Roles that stand out to me are mainly automation, delegation, and policy enforcement, as these provide me the most value in a real-world environment, where automation helps in streamlining user provisioning, de-provisioning, and group management through workflows, significantly reducing manual effort and errors, while fine-grained delegation allows secure role-based access control so that service desk or junior admins can perform limited tasks without giving full domain access, improving security and reducing the risk of privilege misuse, and policy enforcement ensures that all objects follow predefined standards like naming conventions, mandatory attributes, and compliance rules, maintaining consistency across the environment, along with strong workflow management and approval processes for sensitive changes, dynamic group management, and detailed auditing and reporting that help track every change for compliance and security purposes, making One Identity Active Roles a powerful tool for centralized, secure, and efficient identity and access management.
One feature that I feel is not highlighted enough is the powerful auditing and reporting capability in One Identity Active Roles, which provides detailed tracking of every change made within the Active Directory through One Identity Active Roles, including who performed the action, what changes were made, and when, making it extremely useful for compliance, security investigation, and troubleshooting, and in addition, the ability to customize workflows and scripts using PowerShell integration is also very valuable as it allows extending functionality based on business requirements, automate complex tasks, and integrate with other system solutions more adaptively to different needs.
In our organization, One Identity Active Roles is deployed in a hybrid environment, where the core One Identity Active Roles components such as the administration service and management console are hosted on-premises within our data center for better control and security, while it also integrates with cloud services like Azure AD to support hybrid identity and access scenarios, allowing us to manage both on-premises and cloud-based identities centrally, which provides flexibility, scalability, and aligns with our organization's gradual cloud adoption strategy.
What needs improvement?
One Identity Active Roles can be improved by enhancing its user interface to make it more modern and intuitive, as sometimes navigation and configuration feel complex for new users, and additionally, improving reporting and dashboard capabilities with more customizable and real-time analytics would add significant value, while better native integration with cloud platforms like Azure AD and hybrid environments could also strengthen support for evolving infrastructure needs, and simplifying workflow design with more visual and user-friendly options, along with improved performance during large-scale operations, would make it even more efficient and easier to manage the enterprise environment.
One specific issue I have encountered recently is that the interface and workflow configuration can become complex and less intuitive, especially when managing multiple approval steps or modifying existing workflows, which sometimes requires deeper scripting or backend adjustments, so more user-friendly and visual workflow design would be a great improvement, and as a wish-list item, I would like to see stronger, more seamless integration with cloud and hybrid environments like Azure AD, along with enhanced real-time reporting dashboards and easier troubleshooting tools, which would help in faster issue resolution and a better overall administration experience.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in my current field for the last 12 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
One Identity Active Roles is a very stable and reliable solution in our experience, as it runs reliably in production with minimal downtime and handles large-scale Active Directory environments efficiently, provided it is properly configured and maintained, and we have seen consistent performance in day-to-day operations like provisioning, delegation, and policy enforcement without major issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
One Identity Active Roles scales very well as the organization grows, as it is designed for enterprise environments and can handle a large number of users, groups, and directory objects efficiently, and in our experience, it has supported increasing workloads without performance issues, especially due to its centralized management, automation, and role-based delegation model, which allows us to scale the system to manage more identities without adding proportional administrative effort, and it also supports hybrid environments like on-premises and cloud integration, making it flexible for expansion based on industry needs where organizations have reported scalability issues and that continue to perform reliably as the user base and infrastructure grow.
How are customer service and support?
My experience with customer support for One Identity Active Roles has been generally positive, as the support team is technically strong and responsive in handling issues in most cases, and they provide clear guidance and effective solutions.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before implementing One Identity Active Roles, we were primarily using native Active Directory tools along with manual processes and some basic PowerShell scripts for user and group management, but we switched to One Identity Active Roles because those methods were time-consuming, error-prone, and lacked proper governance, delegation, and auditing capabilities, and as the organization grew, it became difficult to manage the identity life cycle efficiently, so we needed a centralized solution that could provide automation, role-based delegation, policy enforcement, and detailed auditing, which One Identity Active Roles delivered efficiently, helping us standardize processes, improve security, and reduce operational overhead.
How was the initial setup?
I would say the integration of One Identity Active Roles with our existing IT infrastructure and directory services was moderately easy, as it integrates quite well with Active Directory out of the box and aligns with the standard Microsoft environment, so the initial setup and synchronization were straightforward, but some complexity came in when configuring advanced workflows, custom policies, and integration with the hybrid environment like Azure AD, which required careful planning, scripting, and testing, so overall, it was manageable with good documentation and experience, but not completely plug-and-play for more advanced use cases.
What was our ROI?
We have definitely seen a strong return on investment after implementing One Identity Active Roles, mainly in terms of time saving, reduced workload, and improved efficiency, where user provisioning and access requests that earlier took hours are now completed in a few minutes through automation, and we observe around a 40 to 50% reduction in service desk tickets related to Active Directory tasks, which allows the team to focus on more critical activities instead of repetitive work, while delegation reduces dependency on senior administrators, indirectly saving manpower effort, and overall, the reduction in errors, faster onboarding, and improved compliance also contribute to cost savings and operational efficiency, making it a valuable investment for the organization.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for One Identity Active Roles has been that it is on the higher side compared to native tools, as it follows an enterprise licensing model, typically based on the number of managed users or accounts, but the cost is justified by the value it delivers in terms of automation, security, compliance, and reduced operational overhead, while the initial setup cost includes infrastructure implementation and possible professional services, which require some planning and investment, and licensing management can be a bit complex depending on the organization's size and requirements, but overall, it is considered a worthwhile investment for large environments where efficiency, governance, and scalability are critical.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before selecting One Identity Active Roles, we evaluated solutions such as Microsoft Identity Manager and SailPoint IdentityIQ, but we chose One Identity Active Roles because it provided a better balance of ease of deployment, strong Active Directory integration, effective delegation, and built-in automation, specifically tailored for our AD environment.
What other advice do I have?
My main use case for One Identity Active Roles is to centralize and streamline Active Directory administration by implementing secure delegation, automation, and governance control, where I primarily use it for automated user provisioning and de-provisioning based on HR triggers, applying role-based access control through access templates, enforcing naming and attribute policies, and managing group membership dynamically, along with configuring approval workflows for sensitive access requests to ensure compliance and audit readiness, while also reducing manual intervention for service desk teams when delegated limited administrative rights through One Identity Active Roles by giving direct access to the domain controller, thereby improving security and operational efficiency and consistency across the enterprise environment.
One specific issue I have encountered recently is that the interface and workflow configuration can become complex and less intuitive, especially when managing multiple approval steps or modifying existing workflows, which sometimes requires deeper scripting or backend adjustments, so more user-friendly and visual workflow design would be a great improvement, and as a wish-list item, I would like to see stronger, more seamless integration with cloud and hybrid environments like Azure AD, along with enhanced real-time reporting dashboards and easier troubleshooting tools, which would help in faster issue resolution and a better overall administration experience.
I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Microsoft Azure
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.