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Directory Services

Overview Online directories store and organize information about people, departments, computer systems, etc., and provide people and computers controlled access to that information. The University maintains two directories for general access: The Electronic Directory, commonly referred to as Ph and available at www.bu.edu/directory, and a Microsoft Active Directory.
Available To Students, Faculty, Researchers, Staff, Departments, Prospective Students, New/Incoming Students, Guests
Benefits Directory services provide access to an authoritative, shared infrastructure for organizing, administering, and locating information about individuals and groups as well as network resources such as computers, disk volumes, folders, files, printers, etc. People may most often look for information about individuals, such as telephone numbers and physical and e-mail addresses. Computer system administrators and application developers utilize them as a convenient way to manage authentication and access to systems and applications.
Key Features
  • Controlled access to information about individuals, e.g., name, title, department, student status, curriculum, telephone number, physical and e-mail address, etc.
  • Information in the Electronic Directory (www.bu.edu/directory) is constantly updated from authoritative database sources in Human Resources, the Registrar’s Office, etc. A subset of that information is replicated in the University’s Active Directory, which also contains information specific to Microsoft Exchange and computers that are joined to the Active Directory.
  • Information can be used to control access to other resources, e.g., students taking a particular course can be allowed to log in to computers in certain labs and view information specific to that course.
Requirements
  • Some information is available to anyone, while other information is restricted.
  • Requirements for specific services vary; some of these are described on their respective pages.
Cost No charge
Getting Started