Property Pages for Use with Display Specifiers

Microsoft® Active Directory® directory service provides a mechanism for adding pages to the property sheet displayed for a directory object from the Active Directory administrative snap-ins or the Microsoft Windows® shell. To add a page to the property sheet, implement a property sheet extension.

Developer Audience

This documentation assumes that the reader is familiar with COM operation and component development using C++. It is not currently possible to create an Active Directory property sheet extension using Microsoft® Visual Basic®.

Creating an Active Directory Property Sheet Extension

A property sheet extension is a COM in-proc server that implements certain interfaces and is registered with Active Directory. To create a property sheet extension, perform the following steps.

To create an Active Directory property sheet extension

1. Create the property sheet extension DLL. A property sheet extension is a COM in-proc server that, at a minimum, implements the IShellExtInit and IShellPropSheetExt interfaces. For more information, see Implementing the Property Page COM Object.
2. Install the property sheet extension on the computers where the property sheet extension is to be used. To do this, create a Microsoft Windows Installer package for the property sheet extension DLL and deploy the package appropriately using the group policy. For more information, see Distributing User Interface Components.
3. Register the property sheet extension in the Windows registry and with Active Directory. For more information, see Registering the Property Page COM Object in a Display Specifier.