Active Directory, Second Edition

Customizing the Active Directory Administrative Snap-ins

For those who have worked with Windows NT domains, you are undoubtedly familiar with two GUI tools: User Manager (usrmgr.exe) and Server Manager (srvmgr.exe). User Manager allows administrators to manipulate the properties of users and groups, while Server Manager can manipulate computer accounts. In Active Directory, a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in called Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) has taken the place of both these tools.

While ADUC is built primarily to manage users, groups, and computers as the previous User Manager and Server Manager did, you can actually use it to manage any type of object within a Domain Naming Context. You can create an entire hierarchy of Organizational Units, user accounts, computer accounts, groups, printers, and so on and manage them with ADUC. The tool, however, is limited in what it provides “out of the box.” While ADUC can display a lot of attributes for objects, you cannot view every attribute, as you can with ADSI Edit. Figure 24-3 shows the various groupings of attributes (e.g., Organization) that can be viewed by clicking the appropriate tab. Each tab represents a property page, which contains a logical grouping of attributes to display.

Figure 24-3. Numerous property pages for a user object

Now compare Figure 24-3 with Figure 24-4, which shows the property pages ...