How does Joinly sync YouServe to Active Directory?

Joinly reads each HR change from YouServe HR Core through the IAM API in the cloud, then hands the action to the Joinly AD Agent inside your network, which makes the change in Active Directory. YouServe holds the authoritative employment record; the agent is the only component that touches your domain.

1. Joiner. HR completes the hire in YouServe. Joinly reads the new records through the IAM API, groups them by personCode, determines the role from the organization unit, job profile and cost center, 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 — timed to the employment start date.

2. Mover. When someone changes organization unit, job profile or department, 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 employment end date, Joinly instructs the agent to disable the AD account and optionally move it to a disabled-users OU. Because a person can hold more than one employment, an account is only disabled when the last active employment ends.

Example: An elderly and residential care organisation runs YouServe HR Core and an on-premise AD across several care homes. It hires a care worker with a start date next Monday. Joinly reads the new records, and on Monday morning the AD Agent creates the user in the Locatie-Noord > Zorg OU, sets the sAMAccountName to a unique pattern, and adds the Zorg-Basis group. When the care worker later moves to a night-shift team, 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 YouServe export that an admin works through in Active Directory Users and Computers by hand — creating the object, choosing the OU, building the sAMAccountName, adding groups. A flat-file route or a plain IAM-API pull can push data to AD, but it offers no role-to-group logic, no personCode-based identity choice and no manager-from-organization-unit resolution, 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 organization unit, 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 with multiple employments per person it is easy to disable an account while another employment is still active.

Joinly vs. the Entra provisioning agent for AD

Microsoft’s Entra provisioning agent can write data to on-premise AD, and YouServe exports can feed a script, but both stop short of the part that actually decides access. Here’s how they compare for a YouServe-driven AD setup.

Watch-outs when connecting YouServe 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 organization units. Organisatorische eenheden, job profiles and cost centers don’t map one-to-one to your OU structure. Joinly builds explicit rules that place each user — and move them on a transfer — into the correct OU.

• Multiple employments per person. The IAM API returns an employee record per employment, grouped by personCode. Joinly picks the newest record as the person identity, so a second employment adds security groups to one stable AD object rather than creating a duplicate account.

• Manager and Person layer. In HR Core Business the manager reference lives on the organizationUnits endpoint, and the persons endpoint only returns data once the Person layer is enabled. Joinly resolves the manager from organization units and checks the Person layer up front, so the AD manager attribute and person feed are both reliable.

• 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 YouServe 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 elderly and residential care organisation with around 2,000 employees across a dozen care homes, running YouServe HR Core but still living in an on-premise Active Directory for its care and scheduling systems. Every new care worker, nurse or facilities staffer starts as a YouServe export that IT processes by hand in AD — creating the object, choosing the OU, building the login, adding groups. With seasonal contracts, flexible pools and staff who hold a second small employment, the queue never empties, and new joiners wait until day two or three for their account.

Connect YouServe 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 and disables accounts on the employment end date with a 30-day grace window — all driven by the HR change in YouServe and grouped cleanly by personCode.

“An account is simply ready in the right OU when the care worker walks in, a second employment just adds groups to the same account, and we can show the auditor exactly which YouServe change created every bit of access.” — Head of IT, elderly and residential care organisation

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