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Active Directory users and groups

9 video lessons · about 43 minutes of video · practice questions on every step

This path is for new Windows Server administrators and IT support staff who look after users and groups in Active Directory Domain Services, and for anyone preparing for a Windows Server exam. It has nine short video lessons, each a few minutes long, covering user accounts and their attributes, profiles and home folders, group types and scopes, nesting, the built-in and special groups, and control of group membership with Group Policy.

By the end you should be able to create and configure user accounts sensibly, choose the right group type and scope, design access with the IGDLA pattern and keep privileged groups under control. You need basic Windows knowledge and an idea of what a domain and a domain controller are; the Active Directory basics path covers that. Practice questions follow each video.

After this path you can

• Create user accounts with a naming convention and suitable account options.
• Set up roaming profiles, home folders and folder redirection.
• Choose between security and distribution groups and among the four group scopes.
• Grant resource access with IGDLA and keep the protected administrative groups tidy.
• Enforce group membership across many computers with Restricted Groups.

Start with step 1

The steps

1. 
   Step 1 · 7:29

   User accounts in Active Directory

   What a domain user account contains and what it controls

2. 
   Step 2 · 5:52

   Configuring user account attributes

   Where the attribute sections appear in Active Directory Administrative Center

3. 
   Step 3 · 4:40

   User profiles, home folders and folder redirection

   Where Windows keeps a local user profile and what it contains

4. 
   Step 4 · 2:22

   Group types: security and distribution groups

   The difference between security and distribution groups

5. 
   Step 5 · 5:02

   Group scopes: local, domain local, global and universal

   What group scope controls: membership and where permissions apply

6. 
   Step 6 · 4:47

   Group nesting with IGDLA and IGUDLA

   The IGDLA nesting pattern and what each letter stands for

7. 
   Step 7 · 6:42

   Default administrative groups in Active Directory

   Which default admin groups live in the forest root and which in every domain

8. 
   Step 8 · 3:02

   Special identities in Windows and AD DS

   How special identities differ from ordinary security groups

9. 
   Step 9 · 2:37

   Managing group membership with Restricted Groups

   Where the Restricted Groups setting lives in a GPO

Courses for this path

The videos are short lessons from these courses. The courses add the demonstrations, labs and the rest of the topic.

What next

Continue with Group Policy in more depth, especially security settings and delegating control of OUs, to manage users and computers at scale.