How does Joinly sync Zucchetti to Active Directory?

Joinly reads each HR change in HR Infinity in the cloud, then hands the action to the Joinly AD Agent inside your network, which makes the change in Active Directory. The Zucchetti employee master holds the authoritative record; the agent is the only component that touches your domain.

1. Joiner. HR completes the hire in HR Infinity. Joinly reads the new record, determines the role from the organizational unit, cost center and job title, and instructs the AD Agent to create the user in the correct OU, build the sAMAccountName and UPN from your rules, and add the right security groups — matched on the matricola.

2. Mover. When someone changes organizational unit, cost center or role, Joinly tells the agent to move the user to the matching OU, swap security-group membership and update attributes. Access that no longer fits the new position is removed, so permissions stay aligned with the actual job.

3. Leaver. On the cessazione date recorded in Zucchetti’s payroll, Joinly instructs the agent to disable the AD account and optionally move it to a disabled-users OU. The real payroll end date drives the exact moment access is removed.

Example: An Italian retail chain runs HR Infinity and an on-premise AD across its head office and stores. It hires a store assistant with a start date next Monday, assigned to the Store-Milano organizational unit. Joinly reads the record, and on Monday morning the AD Agent creates the user in the Retail > Store-Milano OU, sets a unique sAMAccountName, and adds the Store-Staff group. When the assistant later moves to a different store, the agent moves the object to the new OU and swaps the groups the same day.

What manual AD account management costs

Without automation, every account starts as a Zucchetti ticket that an admin works through in Active Directory Users and Computers by hand — creating the object, choosing the OU, building the sAMAccountName, adding groups. Microsoft’s Entra provisioning agent can push HR data to on-premise AD, but it offers limited mapping, no understanding of Zucchetti’s organizational model and no role-to-group logic, so the decisions still fall to people.

• Onboarding delays. New joiners wait for an AD account and group access while a ticket sits in a queue, losing productive days in their first week.

• Permissions that don’t keep up (privilege creep). When movers change organizational unit or cost center, old security-group membership often stays attached, so people accumulate rights they no longer need.

• Forgotten offboarding. Accounts that aren’t disabled on time are a security and audit risk — and a leave date entered by hand rarely matches the real payroll cessazione date.

Joinly vs. the Entra provisioning agent for AD

Microsoft’s Entra provisioning agent can write HR data to on-premise AD, but it stops short of the part that actually decides access. Here’s how the two compare for an HR Infinity-driven AD setup.

Watch-outs when connecting Zucchetti to Active Directory

A few details decide whether this connection stays reliable at scale.

• sAMAccountName uniqueness and length. AD limits the sAMAccountName to 20 characters and it must be unique across the domain. Joinly builds it from your rules with a fallback pattern, so duplicate names never produce a collision or a truncated, unreadable login.

• OU placement from the organizational model. Unità organizzativa and centro di costo don’t map one-to-one to your OU structure, and they are separate hierarchies. Joinly builds explicit rules that place each user — and move them on a transfer — into the correct OU.

• Matricola as the matching key. In Zucchetti the matricola (payroll employee number) is the stable identifier, not an email. Joinly matches on the matricola, so a rehire reattaches to the existing AD object instead of creating a duplicate.

• CCNL-driven dates. Contract type and the payroll calendar drive the real start and cessazione dates. Joinly reads them so the agent creates the account on the right day and disables it on the actual termination date, not a manual leave field.

• Service-account permissions. The agent acts under a service account with delegated rights. Joinly works with least-privilege delegation scoped to the target OUs, so the agent can create, move and disable users without domain-admin rights.

Joinly handles each of these by default with custom mapping and transformation.

Always audit-ready

Every account action the Joinly AD Agent performs is logged in the Joinly cloud: who was affected, when it happened, which OU and groups changed and which Zucchetti change triggered it. For NIS2 that matters directly: access can be traced back to an authorised HR source rather than an ad-hoc request. Joinly is ISO 27001 certified, runs in an EU data centre in Amsterdam, applies least-privilege by default, and is built to meet NIS2 and ISO 27001.

Example case

Take an Italian retail chain with around 2,000 employees across a head office and dozens of stores, running HR Infinity but still living in an on-premise Active Directory for its store and till systems. Every new store assistant, supervisor or head-office hire starts as a Zucchetti ticket that IT processes by hand in AD — creating the object, choosing the OU, building the login, adding groups. With high seasonal turnover and frequent moves between stores the queue never empties, and new joiners wait until day two or three for their account.

Connect Zucchetti to Active Directory with Joinly and that work disappears. The Joinly AD Agent creates each user in the right OU on the start date, builds a unique sAMAccountName, adds the correct security groups, moves people on a transfer between stores and disables accounts on the payroll cessazione date with a 30-day grace window — all driven by the HR change in HR Infinity and matched on the matricola.

“Store moves used to mean a ticket and a wait. Now an account is simply ready in the right OU when the assistant walks in, a transfer moves itself, and we can show the auditor exactly which Zucchetti change created every bit of access.” — Head of IT, retail chain

The outcome this setup is designed for: onboarding drops from days to zero touch, privilege creep from old store roles is eliminated, and the team can walk into its next NIS2 assessment with a complete, source-backed audit trail.