The Active Directory schema is the definition of all object classes and attributes in an instance of Active Directory. The schema of the Austin Active Directory consists of the default classes and attributes for Active Directory Domain Services as well as schema extensions for various applications and services.
The following are the object classes most commonly leveraged by end-users and department IT staff:
- user class - user objects that are either EID accounts created with information from the EID system or department accounts created via the Department User Tools
- group class - groups of objects that can be distribution lists for e-mail created via the Microsoft 365 Management Tools or security groups for defining access to resources created via the Department Group Tools or directly by department IT staff
- computer class - devices connected to Active Directory and can be optionally managed via Group Policy
- organizationalUnit class - containers for objects; organizational units are used to define the hierarchy inside Active Directory
The Austin Active Directory has also been extended with the utexasAuxClass auxiliary class. This class defines a set of boolean, time, and both single-valued and multi-valued strings attributes to allow additional information to be stored on existing objects. The following classes have been extended with the utexasAuxClass auxiliary class:
- user, group, contact, computer, organizationalUnit
The Active Directory team manages the assignment of attributes in the utexasAuxClass and assigns attributes on a per-class basis. The assignment of the utexasEduAustinSingle1 attribute for use on computer objects does not preclude the assignment of the same attribute for a different use on user objects. The attribute assignments are defined in the attribute maps detailed below: