Populate SharePoint list with unique elements based on a domain AD property (for instance Department)

Question

I wish to create a Site Column, that will display all existing departments in our company.

We have the correct departments setup in our AD, and all users subject for this list are part of the same OU ('Organisational Unit' in AD terms).

The departments are subject to change, so I would like the list to update every night, so the list of departments is always up-to-date.

Do any of you have some advise on how to manage this ?

Look forward to your advise!

Answer 1

I would recommend you use a Managed Metadata Term Set, which will make the column available throughout your environment, integrate with search and have all the other advantages of Managed Metadata Columns.

To update the departments each night, write a SharePoint Timer Job which sources its information from SQL and populates it within the term set.

Make sure you manually set the GUID for the term when creating them, that way you can rename the existing term, eg Accounting to Accounts based on the ID, then the environment will update the label for existing values on next save.