Automated User Creation with EMU

Adapted Novell Cool Solutions article by Scott Owen, Alma Public Schools

Have you ever wanted to automate eDirectory and GroupWise user account creation with EMU from Omni? Scott Owen from Alma Public Schools has come up with a solution that was posted to Novell Cool Solutions.

EMU Overview


EMU is a workstation application that allows Novell network administrators to bulk create, modify, manage, import and delete large numbers of eDirectory, NDS, GroupWise or NetMail accounts in a single session. EMU is an ideal user provisioning tool for smaller Novell networks that do not have the budget for Novell Identity Manager. In fully deployed Novell Identity Management environments, EMU comes in handy for doing mass updates and clean-up work in GroupWise and eDirectory.

Bulk User Management Tasks


  • Bulk manage eDirectory, NDS, GroupWise and NetMail accounts, group memberships, organizational roles and home directories
  • Identify and bulk delete orphaned directories
  • Bulk manage extended schema values
  • Mass import student account information from a student registration system
  • Create user web directories
  • Move user home directories to a different server
  • Provision GroupWise and eDirectory accounts
  • Bulk change user account names in preparation for Novell IDM deployment
  • Re-link home directory trustee assignments in Novell IDM vault
  • Clean-up and repair tasks on large Novell systems

The Challenge


EMU does not include a scripted or automated account import function.  One of Omni's long-time EMU customers, Scott Owen from Alma Public Schools, was looking for a way to overcome this limitation and automate Novell eDirectory and GroupWise user account creation. Rather than using EMU to manually add one, two or three student accounts at a time for students who moved into the district, he wanted to figure out a way to use EMU to completely automate the task.

The Solution


Scott started by configuring his student registration system to export new student registrations into a .CSV file on a daily basis.  He then developed an innovative scripting process to automate account creation with EMU.  By combining AutoHotKey, Bmail and his EMUScript.AHK script file, Scott created a process that automates user creation for his system.  Using a scheduled task, Scott's script file automatically imports new student accounts into his system once a day. 

You can download the support executables and the EMUScript.AHK script (in .zip format) and use the EMU sample 100_user.csv file to automatically import users. In the EMUScript.AHK file, you edit the import file name/location and select a specific location (O=, OU=) to import users into. This script can be made into a stand-alone executable and then set up to run as a scheduled task on a dedicated machine.

(Editor's note: Thank you, Scott, for sharing this innovative EMU Auto-Create process with us)

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