SharePoint 2013 reorganizes
how users access their newsfeeds and other social networking
capabilities. SharePoint 2010 provided users with a personal site
called My Site, which combined social networking, document sharing
tools, and other tools. SharePoint 2013 divides the My Site into two
sites, a personal site that includes SkyDrive Pro for document sharing,
and a newsfeed site for social networking, task management, and other
functions. This new organization simplifies the user interface to
social networking functions and provides more room for the expanded
newsfeed. The following sections discuss the features and functionality
that are configured using the My Site Settings on the Manage Profile
Service page in Central Administration.
1. Configuring My Sites
A user’s My Site is a site collection,
and each user is the site collection owner of his or her My Site. The
My Sites architecture includes a web application that hosts My Sites, a
My Site host site collection, the user’s personal site collections, and
several required service applications.
The following prerequisites need to be in place before you
configure your My Sites:
- Distributed Cache
- Managed Metadata Service Application
- Search Service Application
- User Profile Service Application
- A web application host
Once these prerequisites are in place, My Sites
are configured using the following six steps. For a detailed
step-by-step configuration, administrators should refer to these
references: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262500_v=office.15_ and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624362.
1. Create a new web application.
2. Create a My Site host site collection.
3. Add a wildcard inclusion managed path to the web application.
4. Enable self-service site creation for the web application.
5. Set up My Sites.
6. Enable the User Profile Service Application - Activity Feed Job.
The following sections highlight key information that applies to configuring My Sites.
1.1 Dedicated Web Application
You have the option to configure My
Sites in any existing web application, but we recommend that you create
a web application that is dedicated to hosting My Sites. This approach
provides optimal performance, helps to ensure proper security, and
simplifies management. You also need to ensure that Self-service Site
Creation has been enabled, so that each user’s My Site site collection
is automatically provisioned the first time they view their My Site.
The data for the host site collection and individual site collections
is maintained in one or more content databases that are associated with
the host web application.
1.2 My Site Host Site Collection
The host site collection contains the
newsfeed and profile pages of all users. This site collection is
provisioned using the My Site Host site template, which is available
from the Enterprise tab of the Create Site Collection page. A host can
only be provisioned once, for each User Profile service application.
Once the host has been provisioned, you need to define a managed path
to the web application. A wildcard inclusion managed path is the path
used to specify the namespace for each of the user’s site collections.
A user’s site collection is created the first time the user navigates
to the My Site URL. Because each user will have his or her own site
collection, you need to consider the following regarding the My Site
host:
- Storage requirements — Each My Site
host is a site collection in which each My Site owner can create
multiple libraries and lists, and subsequently upload many files to
these libraries. My Site storage can grow very rapidly. Host contents
include user photos, About Me information, and newsfeed attachments.
You should consider setting up a relatively small site quota as a
default, such as 100MB. Keep in mind that as more storage is needed,
the quota can be changed. If the quota is exceeded, users won’t be able
to add a profile picture, post pictures in newsfeeds, or provision a
personal site.
- URL planning — What URL will be
used for My Sites? It is a best practice to create a new web
application for this purpose. Some commonly used URLs for the My Site
web application are “my” or “mysite.” For example, if your company were
called Contoso, and the main SharePoint site were http://intranet.contoso.com, then the My Sites web application would be http://my.contoso.com.
- User Permissions — You are able to
configure whether or not certain users or groups can create personal
sites, follow other people, and edit their profile, and whether they
can use the tags and notes. Figure 1
illustrates how the settings are configured when the User Profile
Service Application is first provisioned. We recommend that you allow
users to create personal sites if you want to utilize the new social
features.
NOTE Because
SharePoint 2013 now stores user social activity in lists in their
personal site, users must be able to create their own personal site if
they want to use any of the social features. By default, this
permission is enabled for all authenticated users. If users are not
given permission to create personal sites, they will be able to have
what is referred to as a “profile-only” experience. This means they are
allowed to view and edit their profile, visit other user’s profiles, be
@mentioned by others, follow people, and, using their People page, see
and reply to other microblog posts. Unfortunately, they will not have a
newsfeed, so they will not be able to create any microblog posts. Nor
can they follow content or tags, or aggregate tasks, and they will not
have a SkyDrive Pro site.
1.3 Setting Up My Sites
Once the host site collection has been
created, and the wildcard inclusion managed path has been configured,
you will likely need to update the My Sites settings in the User
Profile Service Application. This is accomplished using the Setup My
Sites link. These settings may have already been configured during
initial installation and configuration, but you should review and
modify them appropriately. Table 1 summarizes the My Site Settings page fields that you need to configure.
TABLE 1: My Site Settings
| FIELD |
DESCRIPTION |
| Preferred Search Center |
This is the URL to the Search Center you
want the sites in the My Site host to use when they perform a search.
You can also change the default scopes for both people and document
search. |
| My Site Host Location |
This is the URL to the My Site web application, with “/my” at the end. This will be the beginning of the URL for each user’s public profile — for example, http://my.contoso.com/my. The profile page of a user with the login name of “mollyc” on the contoso domain will have a URL of http://my.contoso.com/my/Person.aspx?accountname=CONTOSO%5Cmollyc. |
| My Site Host URL in Active Directory |
This is the URL of the My Site host site
collection that is returned to applications that use Exchange Auto
Discovery to find a user My Site URL. This is an optional setting. |
| Personal Site Location |
This is the beginning of the URL for
each user’s content area, which is different from the user’s profile
page URL. This is the personal site collection for each user, where
they can store their data in lists and libraries. An example URL is http://my.contoso.com/personal. |
| Site Naming Format |
This is the suffix of the personal site
location URL. For single-domain environments, the first option, called
“User Name,” is a good choice. Because there are no duplicate usernames
in a single domain, there will be no conflicts. In multiple-domain
environments, pick one of the other two options. In a single-domain
environment, a user with the login name of “mollyc” will have a
personal site collection URL of http://my.contoso.com/personal/mollyc. |
| Read Permission Level |
By default, all authenticated users are
given Read permissions to new personal sites as they are created, which
is a best practice for My Sites. |
| Security Trimming Options |
This setting determines how
system-generated posts (such as document upload activities) are checked
for permissions before being displayed in the activity feed. It is
recommended that you use the default setting of “Check all links for
permission.” |
| Newsfeed |
This setting controls whether system-generated activities appear on the My Site newsfeeds. |
| Email Notifications |
Enter the e-mail address that will be used as the sender when system-generated e-mail messages are sent to users. |
| My Site Cleanup |
This setting provides access to a user’s
My Site if the user leaves the company or for any other reason the
user’s profile is deleted. |
| Privacy Settings |
By default, user My Sites are private.
Enable this setting if you want them to be public. Many organizations
enable this setting because it helps facilitate social adoption. You
should consider what option is the best choice for your company. If you
don’t enable this setting, no system activities will be posted to the
newsfeed. |
