SharePoint - Query Active Directory through Custom Application Page
This post describes how the Active Directory (AD) and SharePoint integration can be leveraged to retrieve AD data and use in a SharePoint site. There are many classes written for accessing AD data, but this article demonstrates how to bring those data in a SharePoint site. It is a common business requirement where a SharePoint server administrator needs to check whether a site user exists in the AD. The main reason being, what I have seen, when our client had an audit process for their SharePoint sites. In some cases the user, who is a site owner, has either left the organization or due to some other reason, does not exist in the AD, but still is the owner of the site. So we can remotely access the server and search the AD. Otherwise, we can create a SharePoint application page that, with proper rights of course, can access the server AD and query it for a particular user. The page will also show the details of the searched user. In a nutshell, we will create a custom applic