Scenario: Departmental Group Family
Suppose the organizational unit (OU) named Users contains a number of user accounts. Also assume that for each of the values listed below there are one or more user accounts in the Users OU with the Department property set to that value. Thus, the following values of the Department property are encountered in the user accounts held in the Users OU:
- Accounting
- Executive Services
- Facilities
- Finance
- Government Services
- Human Resources
- Information Technology
- Operations
In this section, you can find the instructions on how to implement a Group Family that creates and maintains a separate group for users in each of those departments. The Group Family configuration storage group will be created in the organizational unit named Groups. The Group Family will be configured to create the departmental groups in that same OU.
Open the Active Roles console, and perform the following steps to implement the Group Family.
To create and run the Departmental Group Family
- Right-click the Groups OU and select New | Group Family.
This will start the New Group Family wizard. The remaining steps apply to that wizard.
- On the Welcome page, click Next.
- In the Group Family name box, type Departmental Group Family. Click Next.
- Click the Pre-configured grouping by option, click Department in the list under that option, and then click Next.
- Remove the Groups OU from the Containers list, and add the Users OU to that list. Click Next.
- Click the User option, and then click Next.
- Verify that the Group by these properties list includes the only entry—Department. Click Next.
- Select the Skip this step, without capturing groups manually check box. Click Next.
- Click Next to accept the default rule for group naming: CG-%<key.department>
- Click Next to accept the default group scope and type.
- Click Next to accept the default location for the controlled groups: Group Family home OU
- Click Next to accept the default settings related to Exchange.
- Select the Run Group Family once after completing this page check box. Click Next.
- Click Finish.
Once you have completed these steps, the Group Family performs all the necessary processing to create the groups, one group per department, and adds users to the appropriate groups based on the Department property.
You might look at the contents of the Groups OU in the Active Roles console to verify that the departmental groups are created successfully. You might also examine properties of a group generated by the Group Family, to verify that the membership list of the group is correct. For example, the membership list of the CG-Executive Services group consists of the user accounts that have the Department property set to Executive Services.
Dynamic Groups
Understanding dynamic groups
Active Directory allows groups (herein called basic groups) to include members statically—select objects and add them to groups. Active Roles provides a flexible, rules-based mechanism for populating groups. Once set up, the process automatically adds and removes members from groups.
Active Roles provides rules-based groups called dynamic groups. Membership rules determine whether an object is a member of a dynamic group. A membership rule may take a form of search query, object static inclusion and exclusion rule, and group member inclusion and exclusion rule. As the environment changes, the memberships of objects in dynamic groups automatically change to adapt to the new environment.
Active Roles dynamic groups reduce the cost of maintaining lists and groups, while increasing the accuracy and reliability of this maintenance. Furthermore, it automatically keeps distribution lists and security groups up to date, eliminating the need to add and remove members manually.
To automate the maintenance of group membership lists, dynamic groups provide the following features:
- Rules-based mechanism that automatically adds and removes objects from groups whenever object attributes change in Active Directory.
- Flexible membership criteria that enable both query-based and static population of groups.
In the Active Roles console, dynamic groups are marked with the following icon:
When you convert a basic group to a dynamic group, the group loses all members that were added to the group when it was a basic group. This is because members of a dynamic group can be defined only by membership rules.
When you convert a dynamic group to a basic group, the group retains all its members included due to the membership rules, and loses the membership rules only.
When a member of a dynamic group, such as a user or another group, is deprovisioned, the dynamic group is automatically updated to remove that member. Hence, deprovisioning a user or group removes that user or group from all dynamic groups. This behavior is by design.
Cross-domain membership
When you configure a dynamic group, you choose containers that hold the objects you want to be included or excluded from the group. For example, you could configure a dynamic group to include all users held in a particular Organizational Unit that meet certain conditions. These parent containers of dynamic group members can be selected from any domains registered with Active Roles. Depending upon the location of the members’ parent container, the dynamic group can include objects from domains other than the domain in which the group resides (external domains).
Active Directory has restrictions regarding the types of groups that can have members from external domains, and the types of groups that can have membership in other groups. All these restrictions apply to dynamic groups. Thus, Active Roles disregards membership rules that would add external domain users to a global group. With these natural restrictions, you can configure membership rules for a dynamic group to have members from any domains that are registered with Active Roles.
Whether dynamic groups can have external members depends upon the Dynamic Groups policy. If you want dynamic groups to include objects from external domains, ensure that the Enable cross-domain membership policy option is selected (see Dynamic groups policy options).