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Context Menus for Use with Display Specifiers

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The Active Directory administrative MMC snap-ins and Windows 2000 shell provide a mechanism to add an item to the context menu displayed for objects in Active Directory Domain Services. A context menu item can be added by implementing an COM in-proc server known as a context menu extension. A context menu item can also be added that invokes any file started with the ShellExecute API, such as an application or webpage URL. This is known as a static context menu item.

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 Domain Services context menu extension using Microsoft Visual Basic.

Extending the Context Menu With a Context Menu Extension

A context menu extension is a COM in-proc server that implements certain interfaces and is registered with Active Directory Domain Services.

To create and install a context menu extension

  1. Create the context menu extension DLL. A context menu extension is a COM in-proc server that, at a minimum, implements the IShellExtInit and IContextMenu interfaces. For more information, see Implementing the Context Menu COM Object.
  2. Install the context menu sheet extension on computers where the context menu extension is used. This is accomplished by creating a Microsoft Windows Installer package for the context menu extension DLL and deploying the package appropriately using the group policy. For more information, see Distributing User Interface Components.
  3. Register the context menu extension in the Windows registry and with Active Directory Domain Services. For more information, see Registering the Context Menu COM Object in a Display Specifier.

Extending the Context Menu With a Static Context Menu Item

A static context menu item can be used to invoke any file started with the ShellExecute API, such as an application or webpage URL. To accomplished this, the static context menu item for a particular object class must be registered so that the static context menu item is added to the context menu of objects of that class. For more information, see Registering a Static Context Menu Item.