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Change Windows 2000 AD user name

Environment: Windows 2000, SP4, active directory, Exchange 2000.
We have just hired our 6th executive assistant within the last 6 years. I would like to come up with a solution which will address this change and all future changes.
Let's say our current user's name is Sally Smith and our new user's name is Mary Jones.
I am thinking of creating a user in AD named 'assistant'. The user would log on to the domain with the name of 'assistant'.

Our company would not want emails from this user being sent out as from 'assistant' but I do not want to have to go through the name change every year or so. This user must be able to access all emails and documents that have been previously sent/received to the prior executive assistant.

So should I set up the user with the user name of 'assistant', assign email address of 'reception@ourcompany.com', assign the display name of the user's actual name?

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isaman07

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naldiian

What do you mean by name change every year or so? You are not just creating a new account for the new user each time to get a new person? Any access the user account needs for things other than Excahnge would be handled by group memberships in the domain, and for the Exchange mailbox you could just add access to the new person as needed.

I would recommend the following:
1. Create a user account named Reception or something similar in the domain and then give them an Exchange mailbox. Nobody should use this account directly.
2. Create your assistant's account using their name as a normal user each time - once a year is not much to worry about. Add them to the necessary group(s) for access to the common resources they need.
3. Grant them access to the Reception mailbox, but also give them their own mailbox for things they may need to do specific to them. Always good for each person to have their own mailbox, as they may move to other duties at a later time and this will make the receptionist mail and fucntionality separate from the person.
4. Have both mailboxes opened in Outlook, but configure the user's mail client to normally send from the intended Reception name as you mentioned.

I prefer this idea to renaming an account and the like, as this allows the account to remain and be disabled if the person leaves. You never know if you may want to review what someone had access to or actions they have taken, and if those things change with the new person, you will have a difficult time telling when various permissions were granted or changed.

Each user should always have thier own account...

Andy

pHpp

Yes. Any user should have their own account to be able to track backwards in time to see what they have been doing etc. There is a benefit of doing what you meantioned but still I think as above the best solution is own accounts for each user and creating a new user once a year isn't much if you create rights using groups in your filesystem instead of putting in the user in the ACL.