title: Running Bulk Operations category: Bulk Operations tags: bulk, execution, preview, rollback, progress priority: Normal

Running Bulk Operations

This guide walks you through the complete process of running a bulk operation, from initiating a scan to reviewing results and rolling back changes if needed.

Prerequisites

Before running bulk operations, ensure that:

• You have Administrator or Bulk Operations role permissions
• At least one directory connection has been synchronized recently
• You have reviewed the Bulk Operations Overview to understand issue categories

Step-by-Step Execution

Step 1: Navigate to the Bulk Operations Center

Go to Admin > Bulk Operations (/admin/bulk-operations). The main page displays a summary of your most recent scan results and any outstanding issues from previous sessions.

Step 2: Select the Scan Scope

Choose what to scan:

You can also scope the scan to a specific directory connection or organizational unit if you want to focus on a subset of your environment.

Step 3: Review Detected Issues

After the scan completes, the results panel displays each detected issue with the following information:

Use the column headers to sort by any field. The severity column is sorted by default so that critical issues appear first.

Tip: Click on any affected object name to open its detail page in the Directory Browser without leaving the bulk operations workflow.

Step 4: Preview Changes

Before executing any remediation, click Preview Changes to see exactly what will happen for each selected issue. The preview displays:

Preview: Stale Account Remediation
──────────────────────────────────
Object: jsmith (John Smith)
  Action: Disable account
  Current State: Enabled, Last Login: 2025-07-15
  New State: Disabled, Description updated with disable reason

Object: old-pc-lab04 (LAB-PC-04)
  Action: Disable computer account
  Current State: Enabled, Last Login: 2025-03-20
  New State: Disabled, moved to Disabled Computers OU

Each entry shows the object, the action that will be taken, the current state, and the resulting state after the change. Review this carefully before proceeding.

Step 5: Select Issues to Remediate

You have three selection options:

Best Practice: For your first time running bulk operations, select a small batch (10-20 items) to verify the results before scaling up to the full population.

Step 6: Execute the Operation

Click Execute to begin the remediation. You will be prompted to confirm:

• The number of objects that will be modified
• The types of changes that will be applied
• Whether rollback snapshots should be created (recommended: always yes)

Once confirmed, the operation begins and a new BulkOperationSession is created to track it.

Step 7: Monitor Real-Time Progress

During execution, the progress tracker provides live updates via SignalR:

Bulk Operation Progress
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 67%

Processing: 134 / 200 items
  Succeeded: 128
  Failed: 4
  Skipped: 2
  Remaining: 66

Current: Disabling account 'mgarcia' ...
Elapsed: 2m 34s | Estimated remaining: 1m 15s

The progress view updates in real time without requiring a page refresh. You can see:

• Overall completion percentage
• Counts of succeeded, failed, and skipped items
• The specific object currently being processed
• Elapsed and estimated remaining time

Step 8: Review Results

When the operation completes, the results summary shows:

For each failed item, the system provides the specific error message (e.g., "Insufficient permissions to modify object" or "Object was modified by another process during execution"). Click any failed item to investigate.

Rollback Capability

If a bulk operation produces unintended results, the BulkRollbackService can reverse the changes.

How Rollback Works

1. Before each change, the BulkIssueSnapshotRepository stores the complete before-state of the object
2. After the change, it stores the after-state
3. To rollback, the service restores each object to its before-state

Initiating a Rollback

1. Navigate to the session you want to rollback (via Bulk Operations > History)
2. Click Rollback Session
3. Choose to rollback all changes or select specific items
4. Preview the rollback actions (just like previewing the original operation)
5. Confirm and execute the rollback

Important: Rollback is only available for sessions where snapshots were enabled. If an object has been modified by another process since the bulk operation, the rollback will flag it as a conflict for manual resolution.

Rollback Limitations

Best Practices

1. Always enable snapshots -- The small storage overhead is worth the safety of rollback capability
2. Preview before every execution -- Never skip the preview step, even for routine operations
3. Start small -- Run your first operation on 10-20 items, review the results, then scale up
4. Verify after execution -- Spot-check a few remediated objects in the Directory Browser to confirm correctness
5. Schedule during off-hours -- Large operations (500+ items) should run during maintenance windows to minimize impact
6. Keep a rollback plan -- Know how to initiate a rollback before you execute, not after something goes wrong
7. Document your decisions -- Add notes to sessions explaining why certain items were selected or excluded

Troubleshooting

Next Steps

• Bulk Operations Analytics -- Review history and measure impact
• Bulk Operations Overview -- Revisit issue categories and architecture
• Object Write-Back -- Understand how changes are written back to Active Directory
• Policies Overview -- Configure policies that feed into bulk detection
• Intelligence Hub Overview -- Learn how AI analysis powers issue detection
• Security Hardening -- Ensure your service account permissions are properly scoped