batguebi01: 10.6: Make a temporary Administrator account

Thursday 7 April 2011

10.6: Make a temporary Administrator account

My department runs a large enterprise level network of managed Macs in a rapidly growing school district. We use a software deployment solution to push out all district software and we use Workgroup Manager to effectively manage user environments. Like most enterprise-level networks, nearly all of our staff users are non-admin users with mobile accounts.

Rarely there are times when our users need to be an admin user for a limited amount of time: (to install print drivers for odd-ball home printers, joining an unusual secure wireless network, running an obscure web conferencing app, etc.).

It's easy to make a mobile user an administrator through System Preferences, but it's not so easy to remember to remove the admin privileges. While you can set a calendar reminder, invariably the user is offline when your reminder pops up and then a day, o ...