Q: What is a resource account?
A: Resource accounts are departmental Exchange accounts typically used either as a back-end for your VT PACE (Personal Access for Collaborative Email) account or as a calendar account for things like conference rooms and equipment. See Requesting, Using, and Accessing Virginia Tech Resource Accounts for more information.
Q: How do I request a resource account?
A: If you are an authorized OU admin you can submit a request via the form in the service catalog.
Q: How do I manage resource accounts?
A: Resource accounts are managed through security groups using the Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) MMC plugin.
Q: What are resource manager groups?
A: These are security groups which control access to a resource account. The group is granted permissions to the account (such as full mailbox control or send-as permissions). By adding or removing members of this group you can control who has access to a particular resource account.
Q: What is ADUC (Active Directory Users and Computers)?
A: It is a tool within the Remote Server Administration Tools Pack which lets you perform certain management tasks such as viewing your OU moving users in and out of the OU, creating groups and managing group membership. You must be logged into a machine on the Hokies domain to use ADUC. You can add computers to the domain via AD-Admin adadmin.w2k.vt.edu.
Q: Where can I download the admin tools so I can use the ADUC (Active Directory Users and Computers) tool?
A: It can be downloaded from the Microsoft website, It's part of the Remote Server Administration Tools. See Using the Organizational Unit (OU) Administrator Tool and Other OU Admin Information for more info.
Q: How do I recognize a resource account?
A: Resource accounts all end with "-resc", the description field of the account will be #resc#[UID] where UID is tied to the sponsor of the account.
Q: How do I recognize resource manager groups?
A: Resource manager groups will be named after the account but have "-group" instead of "-resc" , the description field will be #group#
Q: I just added a user to the group but they can't log in, what's wrong?
A: The user may need to log out of outlook or log off then back onto Windows for the group membership to properly update.
Q: What is the difference between a regular resource account and one associated with an Exchange PACE account?
A: A PACE account will have an additional @vt.edu email address associated with it and the Manager group will have "send as" permissions to allow members to send as that account. the PACE accounts will also have an @vt.edu forwarder address in the registry to route non-Exchange mail to the account.
Q: How can I tell the difference between a resource account and an Exchange PACE account?
A: Resource accounts set up as a PACE account will have #pace# in the description instead of #resc#
Q: Can I manage calendar permissions in ADUC?
A: No, you can grant full mailbox access (and therefore calendar permission control) to the resource account by adding a member to the resource management group. The owner will then have to adjust calendar permissions through a client like outlook.
Q: Our OU seems to have an account that does not follow the above rules. what's up with that?
A: Most likely the account you see is an older resource account built before our current processes we are working to fix these and bring them up to standard.
Q: Why are all the resource accounts disabled?
A: To avoid abuse and provide increased security and auditability resource accounts are disabled by default. The accounts can still receive mail and can be accessed by the members of the manager group via their own Hokies credentials. the only thing the disable does is prevent the password from being reset and logging into the account directly.
Q: How do I access a resource account in web outlook?
A: Instructions can be found here.