Auto-Populate Groups

Does the auto-population of groups feature work in secondary directories?

To test, I have made a copy of our production directory to the test environment, have replaced the design with the 8.5 directory template, and have made the server the admin server for the secondary directory. Am I missing something?

I am looking for a nice way to build groups based on OUs. OUs are not always mapped to one particular server as we have remote users that are hosted from the site where VPN terminates.

I would love to be able to auto-populate based on specific OU, etc. or if I cannot achieve this, if I could use a certifier to exclude OUs such as adding */OU1/O to the Excluded Members field of the group document.