By default, a SharePoint user profile comes with approximately 68 defined properties. The better populated these elements are, the better the integrity of the social experience in SharePoint.
Many of these properties are mapped to corresponding values in Active Directory. In this way, they can be updated in AD and then the changes are reflected in SharePoint (after a user profile synchronization).
New to SharePoint 2010 is the ability to update AD from SharePoint. While this is not the point of this recipe, it is important to have this information.
While SharePoint has many properties, there always seems to be the business use case outlining a property that SharePoint does not cover. This can be a result of the enterprise and terminology used.
A large enterprise such as a bank is the example we will use in this recipe. We will create a property to store a branch office location where the employee is located. Creating this property helps classify an employee...