Extending the User Interface for Directory Objects

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 ships with Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-ins, such as the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in, for administration of Active Directory™. In addition, the Windows 2000 client includes user interfaces (UI) for finding objects that reside in the directory and reading and writing properties. This section details what you need to know to extend the UI for viewing and managing Active Directory objects in the Windows shell and Active Directory administrative snap-ins. This section also covers what you need to do to make it easy for your customers to deploy the UI extensions to the user's desktops.

Specifically, this section discusses the following:

• How to extend the UI for Active Directory objects.
• How to use display specifiers, and where to store display specifiers.
• How to add property pages to property sheets for objects of a specific Active Directory object class.
• How to add menu items to the context menus for objects of a specific Active Directory object class.
• How to set the object class and attribute display names, which are the names used to identify the class or attribute in the UI.
• How to set the icon used to represent objects of a specific Active Directory class. The icon is displayed in the Windows shell and Active Directory Administrative snap-ins.
• How to specify whether objects of a specific Active Directory class are displayed as containers or leaf objects. If an object is a leaf object, it only appears in the result (right) pane of the administrative snap-ins and Explorer view of the Windows shell. If an object is a container, it can appear in either the scope (left) or result pane.
• How to extend or replace an existing creation wizard for objects of a specific Active Directory class. Creation wizards simplify what a user needs to enter in order for the object to be created. Currently, the user, computer, group, and other Active Directory classes have creation wizards.
• How to take advantage of the standard Windows 2000 query and selection UI. The Windows 2000 operating system provides COM objects that implement dialog boxes for browsing and selecting the following directory objects: domains, containers, and specific types of objects. In addition, the query (Find) dialog box can also be used or extended.
• How to provide user interfaces for new object classes.
• How to extend Active Directory Administrative snap-ins using MMC extension snap-ins.
• How to use the Microsoft Installer (MSI) and Windows 2000 application deployment to distrubute the COM objects created to perform the tasks listed above.