Tuesday, August 13, 2013

User Profile Service Application - My Site on SharePoint 2010

Plan and set up for MySite in SharePoint 2010 are as below:

1. One of the Best practice for setting up My Site is to create new separate web application with "My Site Host" template Site Collection at root level.

2. Configure wildcard inclusion managed path as 'personal' with this new web application

3. Configure My Site settings for User Profile Service application.

4. Enable Self-Service Site Collection for this new web application which allows auto site collection creation when user clicks on MyContent in MySite for the first time.

There are number of other factors involved in planning of My Site

User Profile Service Application - Plan for User Profile on SharePoint 2010

user profile is a collection of properties that describes a single user, along with the policies and other settings associated with each property. Some of the enterprise social networking feature that user profiles support are: my sites, profile pages, people searching, organizational charts, enterprise search, social tagging and audiences.

New user profiles are created in the following ways:

  • If an authenticated user does not have a user profile, a new one is created using properties taken from the appropriate directory service when that user initially accesses his or her My Site.
  • One or more new user profiles can be created using profile synchronization.
  • custom solution can be developed to create user profiles. 
A user profile is composed of a set of user properties. Each user property provides an item of information related to a user. User property values can come from directory services, business systems, or user input. You can set policies on each user property in a user profile to help govern how the information in that property can be used

Plan of User profile includes: Identify stakeholders, Identify how the profile information will be used, Identify directory services and business systems, Determine which properties to include, Determine property details, Determine personalization settings policies, Plan for capacity

User Profile Service Application - Plan for Profile synchronization in SharePoint 2010

Profile Synchronization : Connections to directory services - Each user that you want to have a profile in SharePoint Server must have an identity in a directory service. Using filters, we can choose to exclude profiles from synchronization.

Profile Synchronization : Connections to business systems - To import properties from a business system, you will need an external content type that brings the property value from the external system into SharePoint Server 2010.

Identify property mapping - To indicate that a user profile property comes from an external system, you map the property to a specific attribute of the external system. Certain user profile properties are mapped by default. You can only map a profile property to an attribute whose data type is compatible with the data type of the property. When you synchronize profile information, in addition to importing profile properties from external systems, you can also write data back to a directory service. You cannot write data back to a business system. Each property can only be mapped in one direction. You cannot both import and export the same user profile property. The data that is exported overwrites any values that might already be present in the directory service.

Synchronization groups : By default, SharePoint Server synchronizes groups, such as distribution lists, when it synchronizes user profiles. You can turn off this functionality from the Configure Synchronization Settings page of Central Administration. Synchronizing groups is only supported for AD DS.

Synchronization schedule : The first time that you synchronize profile information between SharePoint Server and external systems, you must run a full synchronization. After that, you should configure the User Profile Incremental Synchronization timer job to perform an incremental synchronization on a recurring schedule.

User Profile Service Application - Plan for Audience in SharePoint 2010

An audience is defined by a collection of one or more audience rules and by whether all or only one of the audience rules must be met when evaluating membership. An audience rule can be based on membership in a Windows security group, membership in a distribution list, position in an organizational hierarchy, or by a user profile property. To define each audience rule, you must select an operand, operator, and value.

Once an audience has been defined, it must be compiled on a regular basis because the underlying user profile properties and membership in directory services and groups can frequently change. An administrator schedules the timer job that controls when audiences are compiled.

To support a specific audience, you may find that you need to add more profile properties or distribution groups.

User Profile Service Application - Plan for Social tagging in SharePoint 2010



Social Tagging consist of Social Tags, Note Board, Ratings and bookmarklets.
Social Tags and Note Board can be associated with pages, library, items and much more. We can add tags and notes by using "Tags and Notes" control in ribbon (Farm feature "Social Tags and Note Board Ribbon Controls") which also has privacy setting. All these activities are visible in My profile under "Tags and Notes" tab.

Rating are associated with library and list for which we need to activate "SharePoint Server Publishing Infrastructure" feature. Go to list settings -> Rating Settings -> Allow items in this list to be rated - Yes.