---
title: Configure Department and Location Roles
slug: configure-department-and-location-roles
createdAt: 2025-07-30T05:05:05.399Z
---

Department and Location roles are required so you can apply provisioning rules based on a user’s department or physical location. They are also used to assign default entitlements for people in those departments or locations.  These are required to be setup before we can onboard a test user.

# Create Department Roles

We'll create a couple of initial roles to get setup, these will change once your actual department and location data is imported.

1. Open **Activate Studio**.
2. Navigate to **Roles > Departments**.
3. Right-click the **Departments** role and select **Add New Role**.
4. Create a new role named **Administration** under **Departments**.
5. Create another new role named **Information Services** under **Departments**.

# Create Location Roles

1. Navigate to **Roles > Locations**.
2. Create a new role named **Auckland** under **Locations**.
3. Create another role named **Los Angeles** under **Locations**.

## Configure Location Parameters

### Configure User OU

1. In **Roles > Locations**, right-click in the **Parameters** window and select:
    **New Parameter > UserOU**

:::hint{type="info"}
This parameter stores the Active Directory OU  where new users will be created.
:::

2. Open the **UserOU** parameter.
3. Click **Browse…** and search for the OU where new user accounts should be created.
4. Type the OU name and click **Find**.
5. Select the OU from the search results and click **OK**.

:::hint{type="info"}
If different locations require different OUs, repeat these steps for each location.
:::



### Configure User Home Drive Settings

1. In the **Parameters** window, right-click and select
    **New Parameter > UserHomeServer**
2. This parameter defines the server where user home drives are created.
3. If your organisation does not use home drives, skip to the next section.
4. Double-click the **UserHomeServer** parameter.
5. Enter the **server name and share** where home drives should be created.
    The default path is: `\\server\share\Users\loginName`

Where:

- server is the configured parameter value.
- loginName is the username generated in the **Create User** task.

6. Click **OK**.

### Configure User Profile Drive Settings

1. In the **Parameters** window, right-click and select:
    **New Parameter > UserProfileServer**
   - This parameter defines the server for user profile drives.
   - If your organisation does not use profile drives, skip to the next section.
2. Double-click the **UserProfileServer** parameter.
3. Enter the **server name** for profile drives.
    The default path is: `\\server\Profile\loginName`

Where:

- server is the value configured in the **UserProfileServer **parameter.
- loginName is the login name generated during the **Create User** job.

### Configure Exchange Server Settings

1. Configure the **ExchangeServer** parameter on the **Location** root.
    This defines which Exchange Server is used to create mailboxes:
2. For **On-Premises Exchange**, set the value to match the Exchange Server resource name created earlier in the Exchange Server configuration.
3. For **Exchange Online** mailboxes, set the value to `Office365`

For more information on Exchange configuration refer to [Exchange Server Introduction](docId\:XKsIfP3WgQRVzuJmbI_pN)