The User Profile service in
SharePoint 2013 is a shared service just as it was in SharePoint 2010,
and it enables administrators to create and edit user profiles. In
Chapter 3, “Installing and Configuring SharePoint 2013,” you learned
how to provision the User Profile Service Application (UPSA) and
configure your My Site host web application and site collection.
To navigate to the UPSA web page in Central
Administration, click the Manage Service Applications link on the
homepage, and then click the User Profile Service Application link in
the list of installed service applications. Figure 1
shows the User Profile Service Application home page. For those
familiar with the SharePoint 2010 version, you will see that there
aren’t many differences between the SharePoint 2010 UPSA and the
SharePoint 2013 UPSA. The following sections discuss key aspects of the
People and Synchronization settings of user profiles.
1. Profile Synchronization
SharePoint 2013 relies on user profiles
to a much greater extent than SharePoint 2010. Because the user profile
information represents a collection of properties or attributes of the
user, My Sites, search, Azure Workflow, and the new server-to-server
authentication all rely on user profiles. In order for this information
to be available, the user profile data must be imported into SharePoint.
Synchronization, or syncing, is the process that
SharePoint uses to import user profile data from other data sources,
such as Active Directory, LDAP, or by using Business Connectivity
Services (BCS) to pull data from line-of-business applications. In
addition to syncing user profiles, you can also sync groups. As
mentioned earlier, there are now two Central Administration options for
profile synchronization in SharePoint 2013: SharePoint Profile
Synchronization using FIM, and the new Active Directory Import method.
2. Choosing a Synchronization Method
Before you can configure profile
synchronization, you first need to decide which synchronization option
you are going to use. Note that you can switch between sync modes, so
you can start with one and later switch to the other. Table 1 summarizes the different sync options available to the administrator. Use the following steps to choose your sync option:
TABLE 1: SharePoint 2013 Synchronization Options
| OPTION |
DESCRIPTION |
| SharePoint Profile Synchronization |
Full-featured option using FIM. This
option allows two-way synchronization, and the use of BCS to augment
property import. This approach is more difficult to set up and slower
than Active Directory Import. |
| Active Directory Import |
This approach is easy to set up and very
fast compared to other options. Only one-way Active Directory import is
supported, and you can use LDAP filters for users and groups. This
approach allows one connection per domain, and custom property mapping
for simple data types. Mapping to SharePoint system properties and BCS
import is not supported. |
| External Identity Manager |
This approach disables profile
synchronization features from SharePoint. You must use a custom
solution that utilizes the SharePoint API to create user profiles. |
1. In the Synchronization section of the Manage Profile Service page, click Configure Synchronization Settings.
2. On the Configure Synchronization Settings page, shown in Figure 2, select the option to synchronize Users and Groups or Users Only.
3. If you chose SharePoint Profile Synchronization and want to include BCS connections in the process, check the appropriate box.
4.
Choose the Synchronization Option that you want to use and then click
OK. This completes the synchronization type selection process.
