My team recently fielded a request for an unused Exchange custom attribute to use for various automation tasks around AD user groups. Since multiple teams at my company have access to various types of AD objects, we decided to do a quick inventory of the usage of those various attributes. Some quick background on those attributes
In total there are 50 total attributes that Exchange uses to extend the AD schema:
- extensionAttribute1 to extensionAttribute15 (String)
- msExchExtensionAttribute16 to msExchExtensionAttribute45 (String)
- msExchExtensionCustomAttribute1 to msExchExtensionCustomAttribute5 (String: Multi-Valued)
MS recommends sticking to 1-15 and the 5 extension ones. 16-45 might be used for future Exchange features, but I personally haven’t seen this.
in Exchange Online, the data from extensionAttribute# are stored as CustomAttribute#. The multi valued ones also get synced up as ExtensionCustomAttribute#
Normally, in an Exchange Hybrid environment, Azure AD connect will sync the attributes that appear in Exchange Online. You can also extend the rest of the extension attributes as well as any locally created AD attributes.
The following PowerShell code will generate a list of which objects have those 50 attributes filled
$AttributeTable = @{
extensionAttribute = 1..15
msExchExtensionAttribute = 16..45
msExchExtensionCustomAttribute = 1..5
}
$ExtensionEntries = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()
foreach ($Attribute in $AttributeTable.GetEnumerator()) {
[String]$AttributeBase = $Attribute.Name
$Attribute.value |
ForEach-Object {
$CurrenntAttribute = "$AttributeBase$_"
[array]$current = Get-ADObject -Filter "$CurrenntAttribute -like '*'" -Properties $CurrenntAttribute | Select-object Name, ObjectClass, $CurrenntAttribute, @{N='FilledAttribute';E={$CurrenntAttribute}}
if ($current.count -ne 0) {
$ExtensionEntries.AddRange($current)
}
}
}
$ExtensionEntries | group-object FilledAttribute | Sort-object Name | Select-object Name, Count
The direct output will be like so:
Name Count ---- ----- extensionAttribute1 1115 extensionAttribute2 842 extensionAttribute3 925 extensionAttribute4 799 extensionAttribute5 603 extensionAttribute9 63 extensionAttribute10 580 extensionAttribute12 1 extensionAttribute13 17 extensionAttribute14 235 extensionAttribute15 110 msExchExtensionAttribute16 17047 msExchExtensionAttribute17 72 msExchExtensionAttribute45 1 msExchExtensionCustomAttribute1 3
But you can also sort by ObjectClass, or any other properties you would like to add as part of the Get-ADObject call
