If you have ever assigned a user as a manager of a security/distribution group in Active Directory, you may have noticed the option "Manager can update membership list" which grants the user permission to add and remove members from this group. The only problem with this is that there is no easy way for the user to actually make these changes, other than through Microsoft Outlook. So Group Manager was designed to be an easy to use tool for end users to add and remove users/contacts/groups to any groups that they are managers of, for any organisations that do not have (or do not want to use) Microsoft Outlook for this task. It will also be useful for any organisations that are using Outlook but are moving to a hosted Exchange solution, as end users will not be able to make changes to the local domain through Outlook in this scenario.
Features
No configuration required - automatically detects current user and finds only groups that they are manager of
Allows end users to add new members or remove existing members (users, contacts, computers, or groups) to any of the groups they manage
Works with groups that are managed by other groups that the user is a member of
User friendly and simple to use
Add members from other domains in your forest or from externally trusted domains
Control via Group Policy - control which types of objects the user can add to groups, whether or not they are allowed to remove existing members, and more
Export current group members to CSV file
Free Edition Limitations
The free edition is intended to be used by smaller organisations where users only manage a single group, or by anyone that wants to test the application out before purchasing the standard edition. It is only able to manage a single group (if the user is a manager of more than one group then a warning will appear and they will only see the first group found) and the user is also not able to change any of the program options (manually or via Group Policy) or add new members from other domains.
What's new in 3.0.1
New GUI with dark theme Managed groups are now cached between sessions so you don't have to wait for them to be discovered again each time the program is launched Commonly used groups can now be "pinned" to the top of the list of managed groups When adding new members to groups you will now see a summary of the new member (their full name etc) before they get added to the group Added the option to limit searches for new members to only find results from a specific OU instead of the entire domain - this can only be set via Group Policy Added support for SSL over LDAP (aka LDAPS), also only configurable via Group Policy Added the option to view other types of group members that are not users, contacts, groups or computers (off by default but can be enabled in the settings menu) Any group members from trusted domains that could not be resolved to a display name will now show up in the members list, although just as a SID (assuming you have the option to view "other" member types enabled) Removed the Display Name column so now there is just one Name column but this can be configured via Group Policy to show the display name instead of common name Changed default behavior to not expand the full list of nested groups that the user is a member of when searching for managed groups, instead it will only get the user's direct group membership. The old behavior can be enabled again in the settings window or via Group Policy Fixed a bug that caused the error "objectSid item has already been added to dictionary" when searching for managed groups Settings moved from the registry to JSON files stored here: %APPDATA%\Cjwdev\GroupManager
Yes, Group Manager Free Edition is free to download and use on Windows.
What is the latest version of Group Manager Free Edition?
The latest version is 3.0.1.
Is it safe to download Group Manager Free Edition?
The download button links to the official installer published on cjwdev.com, the same file Windows Package Manager installs. You can verify the downloaded file by comparing its SHA-256 checksum with 936097b0dea0ae3dd9aa6fe5d69413f58d874eadc5ab6ded791bbbff7fbdfd2f.
Which Windows versions does Group Manager Free Edition support?
Group Manager Free Edition runs on Windows and is available for 64-bit (x64) systems.
How do I uninstall Group Manager Free Edition?
Open Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find Group Manager Free Edition and select Uninstall. From the command line, run winget uninstall --id=Cjwdev.GroupManager.Free -e.
Alternatives to Group Manager Free Edition
Other System Utilities programs for Windows from different developers.
Chocolatey is The Package Manager for Windows. It was designed to be a decentralized framework for quickly installing applications and tools that you need. It is built on the NuGet infrastructure and
Dell Command Update is a stand-alone application for systems that provides updates for system software that is released by Dell. This application simplifies the BIOS, firmware, driver, and application
Locates services and scheduled tasks running as a specific account across all servers in your domain and automates the task of updating them to use new credentials
A tool for reporting on NTFS permissions across multiple directories and servers. Produce a report of all permissions or filter results to show only locations that match specific criteria, such as loc
