Querying the Active Directory with the Script Task

Enterprise data processing applications, such as Integration Services packages, often need to process data differently based on the rank, job title, or other characteristics of employees stored in Active Directory. Active Directory is a Microsoft Windows directory service that provides a centralized store of metadata, not only about users, but also about other organizational assets such as computers and printers. The System.DirectoryServices namespace in the Microsoft .NET Framework provides classes for working with Active Directory, to help you direct data processing workflow based on the information that it stores.

[!NOTA] If you want to create a task that you can more easily reuse across multiple packages, consider using the code in this Script task sample as the starting point for a custom task. For more information, see Developing a Custom Task.

Description

The following example retrieves an employee's name, title, and phone number from Active Directory based on the value of the email variable, which contains the e-mail address of the employee. Precedence constraints in the package can use the retrieved information to determine, for example, whether to send a low-priority e-mail message or a high-priority page, based on the job title of the employee.

To configure this Script Task example

1. Create the three string variables email, name, and title. Enter a valid corporate email address as the value of the email variable.

2. On the Script page of the Script Task Editor, add the email variable to the ReadOnlyVariables property.

3. Add the name and title variables to the ReadWriteVariables property.

4. In the script project, add a reference to the System.DirectoryServices namespace.

5. . In your code, use an Imports statement to import the DirectoryServices namespace.

[!NOTA] To run this script successfully, your company must be using Active Directory on its network and storing the employee information that this example uses.

Code

Public Sub Main()

    Dim directory As DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher
    Dim result As DirectoryServices.SearchResult
    Dim email As String

    email = Dts.Variables("email").Value.ToString

    Try
        directory = New _
            DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher("(mail=" & email & ")")
        result = directory.FindOne
        Dts.Variables("name").Value = _
            result.Properties("displayname").ToString
        Dts.Variables("title").Value = _
            result.Properties("title").ToString
        Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Success
    Catch ex As Exception
        Dts.Events.FireError(0, _
            "Script Task Example", _
            ex.Message & ControlChars.CrLf & ex.StackTrace, _
            String.Empty, 0)
        Dts.TaskResult = Dts.Results.Failure
    End Try

End Sub