The Active Directory Web Services: Custom Action Protocol is used for directory access in identity management and topology management. Examples of these operations are managing groups and passwords (identity management, section 3.3) and retrieving information about the forest and domain (topology management, section 3.4).

The goal of this specification is to enable the transition of client applications that are currently using non–Web services protocols such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) version 3 [RFC2251] for managing information held in directory services to instead use Web services protocols.