My initial description was not 100% accurate
Each company-defined market area has its own Oracle database
a new customer is entered there
I (and the others in my position) pull a report with the new names
I use Excel to get the data in shape so I can add them to 'my' AD domain
and to create email accounts
then the customer is manually placed in the main database (not by me)
then at pre-defined dates, corporate takes the email data to create contacts
in the other Exchange server
the CRM team apparently does not use this data but pulls from the main database
to create its setup for CRM users
this whole thing wastes weeks and allows all sorts of discrepancies to creep
into the data
the confusion caused by Wilhelm Scheissdreck being listed as Willi in one of the
3 possible choke points is so annoying that those of us in the trenches often
lose it when fixing these errors
then there's Maisie Waszilewski-O'Houlihan who sometimes neglects to use her full last name but does at other times

when the conversion was made to Server 2003 another fun thing crept in
everyone had been using addusers.exe to bulk add users but corporate said that
it couldn't be used in Server 2003

so everyone had to be added manually

when 'my' DC was finally upgraded to 2003 I had forgotten momentarily this edict
and used addusers to add users
it worked
so now I run it "secretly" on corporate's server when no one is looking

I'm sure it could be worse but I'm not sure how

A