WorkSteps 2 and 4
Workstations and accounts
t = 2 Summer 2024
Skills step 2 wrote into the state:
- Windows 11
- Active Directory
- Firmware updates
- Data migration
t = 4 Summer 2025
Skills step 4 wrote into the state:
- PowerShell
- Active Directory
- Entra ID
- Microsoft 365
- Moodle
- ELO
Two summers on a university IT team: about 30 new machines in 2024, accounts that clean up after themselves in 2025.
Summer 2024
About 30
Windows 11 workstations, prepared one at a time and handed over with the staff’s files
Summer 2025
6 months
until a stale student account is removed by a scheduled PowerShell job
Summer 2024: the machines
Every machine had to reach its desk ready to use: software and antivirus, BIOS and firmware updates, local admin accounts, joined to the domain. About 30 of them, prepared one at a time.
Then the people: staff data moved over network storage, files restored, hardware swapped on site, and an introduction to Windows 11 for the people using them.
Summer 2025: the accounts
New students need accounts in Active Directory, email, CampusNet and Moodle, and an account nobody uses any more is still a way in. I set up the new ones, and wrote a scheduled PowerShell job that removes accounts that have been stale for six months, across the university’s systems.
Because it runs on a schedule, the cleanup no longer depends on someone remembering to do it.
And the paperwork
Three working prototypes of document workflows in ELO, the university’s document management system, with documentation on how to build new ones and how to use them.
Stack
- Windows 11
- Active Directory
- PowerShell
- Microsoft Entra ID
- Microsoft 365
- Moodle
- ELO
Carried
- Entra ID went on to step 7, Archive stack