Configuring the User Profile Service in SharePoint 2010

http://sharepointgeorge.com/2010/configuring-the-user-profile-service-in-sharepoint-2010/I first introduced Service Applications and User Profile Service Synchronization back when SharePoint 2010 was in beta, and as many of you who would have attempted this feat, would have come to realize that there were a couple of known issues, in particular those around utilizing a least privilege model with service accounts.  I’m confident in stating that these issues have now been resolved with RTM and in today’s article I will share with you my step by step guide in setting up the User Profile Service application, focusing on its configuration and administration and how we can enable the creation of user profiles via an Active Directory import .
SharePoint 2010 introduces the notion of “Service Applications” which build’s upon the “Shared Services Provider (SSP)” which was introduced in SharePoint 2007.  Service Applications are individual services that can be configured independently and can be shared across other sites within your farm with some service applications that can also be configured across farms.
The individual service applications provided with SharePoint 2010 are listed as follows;

• Access Services
• Business Data Connectivity
• Document Conversion
• Excel Services
• Managed Metadata Service
• PerformancePoint
• Search Service
• Secure Store
• State Service
• Visio Graphics Service
• User Profile Service

This article will build upon our initial SharePoint 2010 install utilizing the least privilege model which I have documented here, so check it out if you haven’t already done so.
Managed Metadata Service
The User Profile service requires that the Managed Metadata Service is setup and configured first before attempting setting up our first User Profile Service.  The Managed Metadata service allows you to utilize managed metadata and provides you with the ability to share content types across sites.  You can read more about Managed Metadata here.
To setup our Managed Metadata Service, navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications.
Click New and select “Managed Metadata Service”
Enter the follow details;
Name: Managed Metadata Service
Database Server: 
Database Name: Managed Metadata DB

I will utilize the sp_farm account for the Application Pool Identity.

Click Create.
Lastly, navigate to Central Administration / System Settings / Manage services on server and start the Managed Metadata Web Service.

User Profile Service
Now that we have successfully configured our Managed Metadata service we can now focus our attention on the User Profile Service.  The User Profile Service provides our SharePoint farm with all the social networking features that we have come to love in SharePoint 2007, plus more.  It forms the basis of My Site support, User profile pages, Audiences and some of the newer features in SharePoint 2010 social computing such as social tagging.
Before we begin, we need to ensure that our Farm account (DOMAIN\sp_farm) is listed as a member of the Local Administrator’s group where the User Profile Synchronization (UPS) service will be deployed.  Please make a note to remove the DOMAIN\sp_farm account from the Local Administrator’s group after provisioning the User Profile Synchronization service.  Please also note, that if you ever have to re-provision the UPS service at a later date, that you will need to ensure the DOMAIN\sp_farm account is added back to the Local Administrator’s group.
Let’s now navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications.
Click New and select “User Profile Service Application”

The “Create New User Profile Service Application” window pops up in which you will enter the following details; (you will obviously enter in the details based on your environment setup)
Name: User Profiles
Create new application pool: SharePoint – User Profiles

Register a new managed account: e.g. DOMAIN\sp_userprofiles (nb: this account will need to be provisioned in Active Directory first)

Enter your Profile Database server details and database authentication.  You will notice that SharePoint 2010 introduces the ability to configure Failover Server which allows you to associate your SharePoint databases with another SQL server for failover purposes utilising SQL Server database mirroring.   We will not specify a Failover Database server for any of our databases at this present time.

Specify your Synchronization Database which is used to store configuration and staging data for synchronization of profile data such as that from Active Directory.

Next, specify your Social Tagging Database which is used to store tags and notes that are created by users.  Social Tagging is a new feature in SharePoint 2010 which is not only displayed against the items that user’s are tagging, but are also displayed in the user’s activity feed.

Next, select your Profile Synchronization Instance Server.
In the proceeding section, we will not create a My Site Host URL and will leave this for part two of this series.
Click Create.

You should now have the User Profiles service application listed and  started.

We will now venture back into Central Administration / System Settings / Manage services on server.
Scroll down to the User Profile Service and User Profile Synchronisation Service and start both.  The User Profile Service should start without any further user interaction, however the User Profile Synchronization Service will ask for your SharePoint Farm credentials.

Click Ok.
Both services should now be listed as started.

This in turn, will correctly configure and start our ForeFront Identity Manager Windows Services (FIM).

We will now configure our User Profile Connection to our Active Directory Domain.
Navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications.
Click on User Profiles / Manage.

Click on Configure Synchronizations connections / Create New Connection.
Enter the follow details;
Connection Name:
Type: Active Directory
Auto discover domain controller or specify a domain controller
Authentication Provider Type: Windows Authentication
Account Name / Password:
Port: 389

Click on Populate Containers

Click OK.
Your connection should now be listed as follows upon successful creation.

We can now easily setup connection filters against our Active Directory User Profile connection by clicking on the connection that was just created and selecting “Edit Connection Filters”.
Specify and Add any User or Group exclusions and then click OK.

Next we will Configure a Synchronization Timer Job via Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications / User Profiles.

Click Enable
We will finish off by initiating a full synchronization via Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications / User Profiles / Start Profile Synchronization.

In order to confirm that the import was a success, the Number of User Profiles should now be set to the number of users in your organization, in my case I have 269 dummy users in my Active Directory domain.  Word of note; this will take some time and is considerably slower than an Active Directory User Profile import in SharePoint 2007.

You can also venture into Manage User Profiles and search for users (please take note that SharePoint 2010 does not display any users by default and that you will have to search for them).

Edit a User Profile to ensure that all the necessary Active Directory attributes were successfully imported.

We have now successfully completed a User Profile Synchronization which will form as a basis for User’s My Sites in my next article.  Until then, happy SharePointing!!
References
User Profile Service administration (SharePoint Server 2010) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721050.aspx
Configure profile synchronization (SharePoint Server 2010) http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721049.aspx

Share|

Configuring My Site in SharePoint 2010

SharePoint My Sites are commonly referred to as “Facebook for the enterprise” and are personal site collections providing each user with the ability to store private and public information such as documents, pictures, status updates, etc easily and efficiently.  My Sites in SharePoint 2010 takes social enterprise computing to the next level and builds upon what we have come to love in previous versions.  Microsoft saw the need to continue to invest and enhance SharePoint’s social networking capabilities, and as web 2.0 technologies continue to sprawl all over the world wide web, Microsoft have again successfully set the bench mark in the enterprise by introducing an array of social computing features to enhance end user collaboration in SharePoint 2010.
In my last article I introduced and configured our first service application for our SharePoint 2010 deployment, User Profiles, which provided us with a central location for storing user details that will later be imported from a content source such as Active Directory.  Today we will continue our journey to plan and configure User’s My Sites in SharePoint 2010.
Prerequisites
This article is the 5th in my series on deploying SharePoint 2010 for the enterprise, so if you have missed the first 4, you can easily catch-up via the links below;

1. Installing SharePoint 2010 using Least Privilege Service Accounts
2. Configuring incoming email in SharePoint 2010 with Exchange 2010
3. Configuring outgoing email in SharePoint 2010 with Exchange 2010
4. Configuring the User Profile Service in SharePoint 2010

Create the My Site Web Application
We begin by first creating a Web Application that will eventually house our My Site Host and subsequent site collections.
Navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Web Applications
Click New

Authentication: Select either Claims or Classic depending on your requirements.  I will select “Classic”
IIS Web Site: Create a new IIS web site (enter your details as per your requirements)

Authentication Provider: Select your preferred provider based on your requirements.
Public URL: Specify the URL that users will type to access their My Sites.

Application Pool: Create a new application pool and give it a descriptive name
As we have been utilizing the least privilege model whilst configuring our SharePoint farm in this series, we will click on Register a new managed account and enter the details for our My Site Application Pool Identity.  Note: This account will be required to be provisioned in Active Directory before you can proceed. e.g. In my example I have created an account called DOMAIN\sp_mysite.

Click OK

Database Name and Authentication: Specify your Database server and Database name.
Failover Server: Specify your failover server if you are utilising SQL Server database mirroring.

Click OK
You should receive the below confirmation that the Web Application has been successfully created.

Click on our newly created “SharePoint – My Site” Web Application and click on General Settings.  Proceed to fill out your Web Application specific settings such as the Default Time Zone etc.

Create the My Site Host Site Collection
Now that we have successfully created our My Site Web Application, we can now proceed to create our My Site Host Site Collection.  This will be the top level site that will house our individual user’s site collections.
Navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Create site collections.
Ensure that the recently created My Site Web Application is selected, enter in a Title and click select the My Site Host Template located under the Enterprise Tab.  Lastly, specify your site collection administrators and click OK.

You should then receive confirmation that the top level My Site Host has been successfully created.

Setup My Sites
Now that we have successfully provisioned our My Site Web Application and Top Level Site Collection that will host our My Sites, we can continue to configure our My Site Settings.
Navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage service applications.
Click on User Profiles.
Click on Setup My Sites located under My Site Settings.

Enter the details of your Preferred Search Center if you have one setup already.
Enter the URL of your My Site Host that we have just created in the previous step and the personal site location.

Finally, select your Site Naming format, configure your Language Options, Permissions and My Site Email Notifications.

Click OK.
Add our Managed Path
Because we have specified “personal” as our Personal Site Location, we will need to define our managed path against our My Site Web Application.
Navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Web Applications.
Click on your My Site Web Application and click on Managed Paths from the Ribbon.

Add “personal” as a Wildcard inclusion, click Add Path and click OK

Enable Self-Service Creation
Our last configuration step provides our users with the privilege to provision their own My Site’s by enabling the Self-Service Creation.
Navigate back to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Web Applications.
Click on your My Site Web Application and click on Self-Service Site Creation.

Select On and click OK.

If I now browse to my My Site URL I will be presented with the following “What’s New” Page.

It is only until I click on “My Content”, that SharePoint will proceed to create my personal site as per SharePoint 2007.

My Content

As you can see, we have now successfully completed our setup of a My Site Host which will house our user’s My Sites.
There is a whole bunch of new exciting features within SharePoint 2010 and its latest iteration of My Site in which I will deep dive in future articles.

References : msdn

Using the Managed Metadata Service in your SharePoint 2010 Sites-Part 3

We come to the conclusion of our 3 part series in configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2010 and today is where all the hard work comes into play.  We shift our focus away from Central Administration and I will be providing you with examples on how we can utilise our managed metadata within our SharePoint sites.
If you have happened to miss out on the first two articles in this series, click on the links below for some light catch up reading;

1. Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2010-Part 1
2. Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2010-Part 2

I mentioned way back in part 1 of this series that the Managed Metadata’s primary purpose is to provide you with a central location to store your metadata that can be later utilised in ANY SharePoint site.  Notice that the word “any” is in caps!  This flexibility is one step ahead of what we referred to as Content Types and Site Columns in SharePoint 2007 where it wasn’t as straight forward.
Adding Managed Metadata to a SharePoint List or Library
Let’s navigate to a List in which we would like to add our Managed Metadata as a column.  Navigate to the List or Library in question and click on List under List Tools in the Ribbon and then click on Create Column.

Enter a name for your Column.  In my example I will call it State as I will be using the State Term Set which we created in Part 2 and select Managed Metadata as your column type.

Set your “Display format” so it either displays just the term label or the entire path.
Under Term Set Settings, select your Term Set. You can also utilise the search facility in the event you have a large number of Term Sets.

Finally select whether you want to Allow Fill-in, which is only available if your Term Set was set to allow it. This is handled by the Submission Policy set to Open, (discussed in Part 2).

Click OK once done.
I will now proceed to add a new item in my fairly bland Custom List via Add new item.

You have the option to click on the browse button on the right or you can begin typing in which it will provide you with Suggestions.  In the above screen capture I began typing in one of the “other labels” or commonly referred to as synonyms which we discussed in detail in Part 2. The end result will be the actual “Default Label” Term listed in the Taxonomy Term Store in Central Administration.  E.G. I was typing in “New South Wales” and the default label in the Term Store was set to “NSW”.

One thing to note is the “Send Feedback” link, which is visible if you click on the browse button beside your metadata field.  This allows users to provide feedback if an email address was specified under “Contact” in the properties of the Term via the Term Store Management Tool.

There are a couple of neat navigation enhancements made available out of the box in SharePoint 2010 which tightly integrates with our Metadata.  Commonly referred to as Metadata Navigation, these options are listed under our List Settings.
Navigate to List Settings / General Settings / Metadata navigation settings.

Within this screen we can specify which fields we want to utilise and incorporate in our Navigation Hierarchies and or Key Filters which are both displayed below the Quick Launch.  Both allow for enhanced and easy drill down when filtering your list.  I have gone ahead and added our “State” Metadata field to both Navigation Hierarchies and Key Filters as examples.

Example of a Navigation Hierarchy.

Example of Key Filters.

Well, that’s just about it on the Managed Metadata service application.  I hope you have enjoyed this 3 part series in which you can now take away and utilise within your own deployments.  Taxonomy in SharePoint 2010 has definitely come along way, easily allowing you to create and maintain your metadata in an organised fashion.
Until next time.. Happy SharePointing!
Articles in this series

Share|

Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2010-Part 2

n my previous article, I introduced you to the Managed Metadata Service in SharePoint 2010 and discussed some of the key concepts, before delving into the setup and configuration of the Managed Metadata Service Application.   Today we continue our journey and venture into creating Groups, Term Sets and Terms utilising the Term Store Management Tool.  I will then demonstrate how we can utilise our managed metadata within our SharePoint sites in the next and final article in this series.
Let’s begin by venturing back into the Term Store Management Tool which we first introduced in Part 1.
Navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications.  Highlight the Managed Metadata Service and click on Manage.

This launches the Term Store Management Tool which we briefly introduced in Part 1 of this series.
Let’s begin by creating a new group.  You can do so by clicking on the Management Metadata Service node (or whatever you called it) and selecting New Group.

In my example I will create a group labeled “Office Locations”.  I have entered a description to help others identify the purpose of this group and added the Group Managers and Contributors, so what’s the difference between the two levels of permissions?

Group Managers have the privilege to add items to the group and also have the ability to add users to the Contributors group.
Contributors have the privilege to only add and edit terms and set term hierarchies within the group.
After adding the above details, click on Save.
Our new Group will now be listed as per the below.

I will now create 2 Term Sets which will sit under “Office Locations”.  They will be, “State” and “City”.
You can do so by clicking on the Group Name and selecting New Term Set.

I will label my first Term Set as “State”.
Here I will identify the owner of this Term set, optionally specify an email address for “term suggestion” and list the Stakeholders who are notified before major changes are made to the term set.
We can also set the Submission Policy which dictates whether we allow users to contribute to the Term Set (commonly referred to folksonomy) or restrict it to only metadata managers (Taxonomy).
Our last option determines whether we will allow our end users to utilise the term set for tagging.

Once you have specified your options, click Save.  I will now proceed to create a second Term Set labeled City as per the above instructions.  Once finalised, our Term Sets will be listed under our Group as per the below screen capture.

I will now proceed to create our Terms below our Term Sets.  I’ll begin by selecting the first Term Set “State” and then selecting Create Term.

I will create my first Term,  “NSW” which is an Australian State.  You will then be greeted with the below screen;

Here we can specify whether the Term is available for Tagging, add a Description to assist users and add “Other Labels” in which we can enter synonyms and abbreviations relating to the Term.  This might come in handy when adding Terms and in my example, I have added “New South Wales” as an additional Label to the abbreviated “NSW” Term.
Click Save once you have completed the modifications.  I will proceed to create a Term for each State and City following the above steps and you should have something similar to the below once you have finished.

Note, we can expedite the creation of Term Sets by using the Import method

As an example, I have utilised the sample Import File provided by Microsoft and imported the contents within our Managed Metadata Service.

Now that we have a thorough understanding of the creation of Groups, Term Sets and Terms we will continue our journey in the next and final part of this series where we will utilise our Metadata within our SharePoint Sites.
Articles in this Series
Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2010-Part 1

Share|

Configuring the Managed Metadata Service Application in SharePoint 2010-Part 1

The Managed metadata service application is a welcome addition to SharePoint 2010 and is one of my favorite Enterprise Content Management features within this release. In this three part series I plan to delve into the configuration of the Metadata Service Application and then finish off with real life examples on utilizing our metadata throughout our SharePoint sites.  So what is the Managed Metadata Service Application all about and what value does it bring over what we had in SharePoint 2007?
The Managed Metadata’s  primary purpose is to provide you with a central location to store metadata (commonly defined as data about data) that can be utilised throughout any site within your SharePoint farm.  This is definitely one step ahead of what we referred to as Content Types and Site Columns in SharePoint 2007 where it was cumbersome to deploy to more than one site collection.  I touched upon the Managed Metadata Service Application in my article inConfiguring the User Profile Service in SharePoint 2010 as this was a prerequisite for the User Profile Service Application.
Primer on the Managed Metadata Service in SharePoint 2010
Managed Metadata and the word Taxonomy go hand in hand, and as mentioned previously, the Managed metadata service application allows us to formalize our Taxonomy or metadata which will be utilized across the entire farm.
There are a number of concepts that you will need to familiarize yourself with before we embark on the configuration.
Term Store This is the database in which our managed metadata is stored in.
Term is a word or a phrase that can be associated with an item in SharePoint Server 2010.
Term set is a collection of related terms.
There are two types of Terms available within SharePoint 2010.  These are “Managed Terms” and “Enterprise Keywords”.
“Managed terms, commonly referred to as “Taxonomy” are predefined words or phrases that can only be created by users with the appropriate permissions.  We can refer to this special group of users as “Metadata Content Managers”.
“Enterprise keywords, commonly referred to as “Folksonomy” are words or phrases that have been added by the end user.
Now that we have a better understanding on some of the key concepts, let’s deep dive into our setup and configuration of the Managed Metadata Service Application.
Setup the Managed Metadata Service
To setup our Managed Metadata Service, navigate to Central Administration / Application Management / Manage Service Applications.
Click New and select “Managed Metadata Service”
Enter the follow details;
Name: Managed Metadata Service
Database Server: 
Database Name: Managed Metadata DB

I will utilize the sp_farm account for the Application Pool Identity.

Click Create.
Lastly, navigate to Central Administration / System Settings / Manage services on server and start the Managed Metadata Web Service.

Now that we have successfully setup our Managed Metadata Service, let’s venture into the Term Store Management Tool.  You can do so by navigating to Central Administration / Manage Service Applications and clicking on the newly created Managed Metadata Service.
Note, You can achieve the same by highlighting the service application and clicking on the Manage icon located in the ribbon.

This will launch the below screen which is referred to as the Term Store Management Tool.

Let’s quickly highlight what is made available on this screen.
Available Service Applications: If the farm has been setup with multiple Managed Metadata service applications you can easily navigate and configure each one from the single interface.
Sample Import: Here, Microsoft is providing your designated Metadata Managers with a template import file.  This template can be used as a base of creating your own which can then be later imported.
Term Store Administrators: This is where you would add the designated users which will provide them with the ability to create new term set groups.  By doing so, they will in turn be able to provide the necessary permissions to the group manager role.  Note, users added here have full control of the specified term store.  In the above screen capture, I have gone ahead and added Administrator and myself as Term Store Administrators.
Default Language: This one is self explanatory
Working Languages: In addition to the Default Language, you can also specify additional languages available for translation purposes.
That’s it for now.  Stay tuned for my next article in which I will venture into creating Groups, Term Sets and Terms and demonstrate how we can utilize our managed metadata within our SharePoint sites.

Reference : msdn