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MOSS User Profile Info - How the information flows

Posted on 7/8/2007 @ 12:10 AM in #Sharepoint | 6 comments | 9980 views

Let me start with a diagram -

Okay, now for the explanation.

As you can see, there are various moving peices in how the user profile information flows within MOSS. Here are the salient points -

  1. A subset of such information sits inside the content db for the given website/sitecollection.
  2. WSS sites make the best possible effort to populate UserInfo when the first encounter a given user (i.e. say when the user is first added to the site).
  3. Actual user profile info sits inside the shared service provider db.
  4. SSPDB is kept up to date with profile information via an incremental profile import job that you have to setup (see instructions here (AD/ADAM/LDAP) and here (BDC)).
  5. The SSP synchs down profile information to individual content DBs based on a timer job that runs every hour (see instructions on how to shorten this time cycle).
  6. If actual SSP based user profile information is missing, then the content db "diet-userprofile-info" masquerades as user profile :).
  7. If actual SSP based user profile information is available, then this SSP user profile information overrides the MySettings edits.
  8. Individual users can manage their information in the UserInfo table via the MySettings link, which is userdisp.aspx?ID={userid}, or useredit.aspx?ID={userid}. Again, note that this info will get overridden every hour by what sits in the SSP. There are ways to prevent this overriding.
  9. Administrators can manage other users profile info via the same link, appropriate rights can be delegated to the end users to allow managing other users info. But if you are using MySites/Profiles, then you shoudl manage profiles via the SSP/MySite.
  10. If a MySite exists, the user can & should manage their profile information via their MySite.
  11. If a MySite exists, then administrators can & should manage profile information via the SSP profile DB, or MySettings for the user being edited.

On 11/16/2007 12:56:00 AM Nebelstreif said ..
Under which conditions is the useredit.aspx restricted to just editing the Account field?
What makes the Add Picture control differ for different users on EditProfile.aspx: i.e. when some see a URL field and some see buttons to Add/Change Picture to My Site?
What users are left out when browsing the All Site Users in standard Detail/List views and can be seen when creating a custom view for the same list?
Thanks in advance,
Alexey

On 1/17/2008 11:49:32 AM Tony Black said ..
Great write up on user profile

On 9/23/2008 12:09:08 PM Nick said ..
Hi, Great article, very helpful. The diagram is missing though I'm afraid, any cahnce you could email it to me?? Cheers, Nick.

On 9/28/2008 8:03:39 PM Craig said ..
Hi Sahil, you might want to re-think some of those double-ended arrows, as some of them are only one way, in particular, nothing syncs back to AD/ADAM/LDAP, it's a one way pull and will overwrite any changes that users make to their profiles. Otherwise an interesting diagram. Later'ish
Craig

On 9/28/2008 9:23:26 PM Sahil Malik said ..
Hey Craig - Yeah that is correct. Thanks for pointing out. S

On 11/9/2008 4:39:07 PM Josh said ..
Hi Sahil, I am trying to get User profile data like Name, City, State etc and display on a site. Is there a out of the box webpart that I can use? How can I do if you have some other ideas. Thanks in Advance,
Josh

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