Organizational units (OUs) in an Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) managed domain enables you to logically group objects such as user accounts, service accounts, or computer accounts together. You may also be interested in learning about how to create Organisation Units, Service Accounts, and Active Directory Security Groups, and Active Directory Structure: Forest Trees, Domain, and Sites. Read about how to install and configure Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2022. Please see also how to delete OUs or Containers in Active Directory. In this article, you will learn how to Create and find Organisation Unit paths in AD.

Most people refer to organisation units as a container. You can then assign administrators to specific OUs, and apply group policy to enforce targeted configuration settings.

What is an Active Directory (AD)?

It is a Microsoft Directory Service that runs on Windows Server and allows administrators to manage network permissions and access. Data in Active Directory is stored as objects. A single element, such as a user, group, application, or device such as a printer is referred to as an object.

Note: Organizational units are different from Containers which are similar to OUs but are other forms of organizational objects that are contained within the Active Directory.

OUs differ from Containers primarily because an OU can have a Group Policy Object (GPO) linked to it. Whereas a Container cannot

Create Organisation Unit in AD

To create an OU. From the “Server Manager” locate “Tools” on the upper side of the server manager dashboard and click on Active Directory Users and Computers.

Click-on-ADUC — Active Directory Users and Computers

Next, right-click on your server domain name

Click-on-the-server-Domain-name — Creating OU

Finally, enter a unique name for the OU. You can check the box “Protect container from accidental deletion” and click Ok.

Enter-the-name-of-the-of-OU — Enter the OU name and click Okay

How to find the Organisation Unit path

To locate the OU path, start Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC) and make sure Advanced Features is enabled. Click the View menu, then Advanced Features.

Now that Advanced Features is enabled, you will be able to locate the Attribute Editor tab under the OU’s property.

Copy-the-OU-Attributes — Locating OU Attributes

Right-click the OU with the name IT Unit and click Properties. Click the tab Attribute Editor. Find the attribute distinguishedName. Double-click on it and copy the value. The value in my OU is OU=IT Unit,DC=techda,DC=com.

I hope you found this blog post helpful on how to Create and find Organisation Unit paths in AD. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comment session.