Naming Conventions for groups in Active Directory

Active Directory requires that all groups have unique names. University IT achieves this in WOLFTECH by prefixing the group name with the college or department’s OU name, indicated generically in documentation as “<DEPT>”.

The table below outlines the naming conventions that should be used for different types of groups on the WOLFTECH domain.

Computer/User Groups

  • Format
    • <DEPT>-<NAME>
    • <DEPT>-<SUBOU>.<TYPE>
  • Examples
    • ECE-ACS Users
    • ECE-Teaching Labs.Desktops
  • Notes
    • All group names within your OU must start with <DEPT>-.

Software Groups

Software group names must follow the format:

<DEPT>-<SW|FW|DN>-<COMPANY>-<PRODUCT>-<VERSION>[-SS]

DEPT is short for “department” and in the case of naming conventions, is synonymous with “college” where the two can and are often used interchangeably.

SW|FW|DN are short for “software”, “freeware”, and “deny group, respectively.

“SW” must be used when the software being packaged for distribution requires the purchase of some kind of license to legally be able to use the software.

“FW” must be used when the software being packaged for distribution does not require a license to use. This includes most open source software and closed source made available to use at no cost. Please be aware that just because the software is free it may still be a violation of the license to package and install in our environment. For example, MobaXterm has a Home Edition that is free. However, the license states that the Home Edition may not be packaged for distribution from a system like Configuration Manager. All installs must be done by the user that will be using the software.

“DN” stands for Deny Group and is a group used to exclude member computers from an application deployment. For example, there’s a new version of an application that you want to make available to your users as a required deployment but there are several users that you want to keep at the old version. In this situation you will add the user’s computers that you do not want to have the new application installed to your department or college’s DN group for the new version of the application. Those computers will be excluded from the collection in Configuration Manager and will not get the new version installed.

COMPANY

  • Examples
    • ECE-SW-Microsoft-Office-2003-r2  (Licensed Software, Revision 2)
    • ECE-SW-Microsoft-Office-2003-SSr2 (Licensed Software, Self Service, Revision 2)
    • ECE-SW-Microsoft-Office-2007 (Licensed Software)
    • ECE-SW-Microsoft-Office-2007-SS (Licensed Software, Self Service)
    • ECE-FW-Mozilla-Firefox-1.0.2-r2 (Freeware, Revision 2)
    • ECE-FW-Mozilla-Firefox-1.0.2-SSr2 (Freeware, Self Service, Revision 2)
    • ECE-FW-Mozilla-Firefox-3.6.3 (Freeware)
    • ECE-FW-Mozilla-Firefox-3.6.3-SS (Freeware, Self Service)
    • ECE-DN-Mozilla-Firefox-1.0.2-r2 (Deny Group, Revision 2)
    • ECE-DN-Mozilla-Firefox-1.0.2-SSr2 (Deny Group, Self Service, Revision 2)
    • ECE-DN-Mozilla-Firefox-3.6.3 (Deny Group)
    • ECE-DN-Mozilla-Firefox-3.6.3-SS (Deny Group, Self Service)

For more information about software distribution, see Software Distribution.