Set up Manual File Classification

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2012

Users can manually classify files and folders using the File Classification Infrastructure in Windows Server 2012. Users can tag their data by the resource properties defined or enabled in the domain controller.

The following procedures provide manual file classification in your organization:

  • Create/enable resource properties

  • Set group policy settings to enable the manual classification UI on Windows 8 devices

  • Classify the files and folders based on your resource properties

Create Resource Properties

The following procedure demonstrates how to create two resource properties: Country and Department.

To create and enable pre-created resource properties

  1. In the left pane of Active Directory Administrative Center, click Tree View. Expand Dynamic Access Control, and then select Resource Properties.

  2. Right-click Resource Properties, click New, and then click Reference Resource Property.

    Tip

    You can also choose a resource property from the Tasks pane. Click New and then click Reference Resource Property.

  3. In Select a claim type to share its suggested values list, click country.

  4. In the Display name field, type country, and then click OK.

  5. Double-click the Resource Properties list, scroll down to the Department resource property. Right-click, and then click Enable. This will enable the built-in Department resource property.

  6. In the Resource Properties list on the navigation pane of the Active Directory Administrative Center, you will now have two enabled resource properties:

    • Country

    • Department

Set Group Policy Settings for Manual File Classification

You need to set the following two group policy settings in order to enable the manual classification UI on Windows 8 devices:

  • File Classification Infrastructure: Display Classification tab in File Explorer: This setting controls the display of the classification tab in the Properties tab of File Explorer.

  • File Classification Infrastructure: Specify classification properties list: This setting controls which set of resource properties are displayed in the classification tab in your resource location. (see resource properties list section below)

To edit group policy settings for manual classification:

  1. Open Group Policy Management, select your domain, and then click Domain Controllers.

  2. Right-click Default Domain Controllers Policy, and then click Edit.

  3. To enable group policy settings to display Classification tab in File Explorer:

    In the Group Policy Management Editor window, double-click Computer Configuration, double-click Policies, double-click Administrative Templates, double-click System, and then double-click File Classification Infrastructure.

  4. Double-click File Classification Infrastructure: Display Classification tab in File Explorer. In the File Classification Infrastructure: Display Classification tab in File Explorer dialog box, select Enabled

  5. To enable group policy setting to specify classification properties list:

    Double-click File Classification Infrastructure: Specify classification properties list. In the File Classification Infrastructure: Specify classification properties list dialog box, select Global Properties list and then select Enabled.

    Note

    Specify the resource property list you want displayed in the Classification Properties list box. By default, the Global Resource Properties List is used if you do not specify anything in the Classification Properties List box.

  6. Close Group Policy Management.

  7. On the Windows 8 client, open a command prompt and type gpupdate /force.

Classify files and folders manually

To manually classify files and folder

  1. Navigate to the folder on your file server that contains files that you want to classify.

  2. Right-click a file in that folder, and then click Properties.

  3. Click the Classification tab, select the resource property you want to tag the folder and click the value, and click OK.

Classification properties lists

To allow you to expose different sets of classification properties to different users, you can create classification properties lists that contain specific resource properties. For example, you might want all the HR employees to set a resource property called “HR file type” and the finance department employees to set a resource property called “Finance file type”

In order to expose HR and Finance with different resource properties, you can create two classification properties lists in the Dynamic Access Control node in Active Directory and populate them with the appropriate resource properties (note that the built-in Global properties list is populated by default)Then in the group policy for the HR department, use the “HR properties list” and for the Finance department, use the “Finance properties list”