The present invention is directed to the application of the Class of Service (CoS) feature in a directory server. The CoS feature allows user entries in a directory to be associated to service templates for multiple registered services in the directory. Once a service is registered, a CoS definition (service definition) may be created for that service under the organization entry. Once a service gets activated, an associated CoS template (service template) may be created for that service using its service definition. The template entries contain a list of shared attribute values and changes to these values get automatically applied to all the entries sharing the attribute. By creating these service definitions and templates under an organization entry, all the service privileges can be made available to all entries under the organization. Similarly, policies for resources can be defined for an organization and policy specific attributes can be made applicable to all the entries in the organization. By applying COS to roles and organizations to implement privileges for services and policies for resources, a solution with simplifies managing entries in the directories is provided. As a result, there are reduced storage requirements as well as greater flexibility and scalability of a directory server.