Paul Liebrand's Weblog

Best information I could find on my site memberships/my sharepoint sites…good posting.

Best information I could find on my site memberships/my sharepoint sites…good posting.

We have our users organized into Active Directory groups. Those AD groups are then associated with a particular SharePoint group. If I want a user to save documents through his/her My SharePoint Sites, will I then have to add each individual user to the SharePoint group associated with Members of this site group setting? That pretty much tells me I have to manage users at the SharePoint level, not AD like I was hoping. Is that correct?

You are correct. Although dropping an AD group into the associated SharePoint members group will give everyone access to that site. The SharePoint membership functionality does not look in the AD group to determine who is a member of it.

So if you want to make use of the My SharePoint Site feature, you really have two options. 1) You have to explicitly add the users to the members group in SharePoint, or 2) Use the published links feature of the SSP (not dynamic but can be used publish important links to the Office clients).

You are correct. Although dropping an AD group into the associated SharePoint members group will give everyone access to that site. The SharePoint membership functionality does not look in the AD group to determine who is a member of it.

So if you want to make use of the My SharePoint Site feature, you really have two options. 1) You have to explicitly add the users to the members group in SharePoint, or 2) Use the published links feature of the SSP (not dynamic but can be used publish important links to the Office clients).

Thanks for the tips. THis may seem like a silly question, but on in a users mysite, their isn’t an option for them to “set as default my site”. Do you know how this is controlled? I think this is the reason why our users aren’t seeing their My SharePoint Site in Office Client Applications.

The “Set As Default My Site” is normally located in the top right corner of the screen right below the “Site Actions” button.

Generally this link will disappear if the PersonalSiteUrl registry key has a value in the following location:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Portal

(or if the Active Directory Web Site property is set to the URL of your My Site.)

If the value listed here does not match that of your actual “My Site” it will show the “Set as Default My Site” option again.

This functionality is controlled via an ActiveX control, so make sure the URL of the My Sites has been specificed in the Trusted Sites zone of Internet Explorer.

When clicking the “Set as Default My Site” option the following things occur:

- The Active Directory property Web Site gets set for the user
- The HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Open Find\Places\UserDefinedPlaces\PersonalSite
- The HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common\Portal gets a PersonalSiteURL value set

If you clear all these things and then visit your My Site again you should get prompted with a dialog box to set it as your default My Site.

Probably the easiest thing to do is to simply change the value under the registry key ..\Common\Portal for the value PersonalSiteURL to something else. This will cause SharePoint to display the Set as Default My Site link again.

The “Set As Default My Site” is normally located in the top right corner of the screen right below the “Site Actions” button.

Generally this link will disappear if the PersonalSiteUrl registry key has a value in the following location:

HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0CommonPortal

(or if the Active Directory Web Site property is set to the URL of your My Site.)

If the value listed here does not match that of your actual “My Site” it will show the “Set as Default My Site” option again.

This functionality is controlled via an ActiveX control, so make sure the URL of the My Sites has been specificed in the Trusted Sites zone of Internet Explorer.

When clicking the “Set as Default My Site” option the following things occur:

- The Active Directory property Web Site gets set for the user
- The HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0CommonOpen FindPlacesUserDefinedPlacesPersonalSite
- The HKCUSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0CommonPortal gets a PersonalSiteURL value set

If you clear all these things and then visit your My Site again you should get prompted with a dialog box to set it as your default My Site.

Probably the easiest thing to do is to simply change the value under the registry key ..CommonPortal for the value PersonalSiteURL to something else. This will cause SharePoint to display the Set as Default My Site link again.

O.K. that was a big help. Our My sites are actually on a different web application, so I made the URL of the My Sites a Trusted Site zone on Internet Explorer and the “Set as Default My Site” Link is now available.

It doesn’t seem to be updating properly because the link “Set as Default My Site” is still visisble. I’ve checked the registry settings and they are in place. Anyway I can verify the Active Directory property Web Site?

It only seems to be returning the “My Site” link for My SharePoint Sites under client office applications. I know the search processed successfully last night, so is it related to “My Sites” being on a different web application then my intranet?

I have my “My Sites” on a different web application so that is definitely not the problem. The only way to verify the Active Directory property is to go into the Manage Users of the domain, look up your account, and then look in the Web site field.

Do you have a search schedule created for full and incremental?

I have my “My Sites” on a different web application so that is definitely not the problem. The only way to verify the Active Directory property is to go into the Manage Users of the domain, look up your account, and then look in the Web site field.

Do you have a search schedule created for full and incremental?

I looked in AD, and it doesn’t seem like that property is being set.

yeah the full search schedule is every night at 12:00. The incremental runs every 5 minutes

Adrian,

I am not sure why the Active Directory properties are not being updated. It appears to be a permission issue or something like that. I have not experienced that problem yet.

Have you attempted to run the membership query listed at this post http://liebrand.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/moss-2007-and-user-memberships/ against your account name to see if it returns any results?

Adrian,

I am not sure why the Active Directory properties are not being updated. It appears to be a permission issue or something like that. I have not experienced that problem yet.

Have you attempted to run the membership query listed at this post http://liebrand.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/moss-2007-and-user-memberships/ against your account name to see if it returns any results?

Paul,

It looks like the My SharePoint Sites is populating with the correct sites now. Is it the full crawl schedule on the “My Sites” Web appliction that populates the My SharePoint Sites in office client applications?

Adrian,

The incremental crawl will pick up your membership information once you have been added, so every 5 minutes in your case. However, the Office Client propagation of this information happens once every 24 hours (unless you blow away the registry key listed in post http://liebrand.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/office-2007-and-my-sharepoint-sites/).

Adrian,

The incremental crawl will pick up your membership information once you have been added, so every 5 minutes in your case. However, the Office Client propagation of this information happens once every 24 hours (unless you blow away the registry key listed in post http://liebrand.wordpress.com/2007/11/29/office-2007-and-my-sharepoint-sites/).

have you found a way to create webpart or modify out of the box webpart so it picks up ALL your memberships (where you are owner, visitor, or have custom permissions), not JUST the ones where you’re a member? We are looking to implement this type of functionality.

Per KB 841057, modification of this stored procedure will put your installation in an unsupported state-which means you will need to restore to a date prior to running this stored proc before receiving Microsoft support.

You can take a look here if you would like:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841057

Might be worth mentioning in your blog that you “discovered” this in the stored procedures included with SharePoint.

Per KB 841057, modification of this stored procedure will put your installation in an unsupported state-which means you will need to restore to a date prior to running this stored proc before receiving Microsoft support.

You can take a look here if you would like:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841057

Might be worth mentioning in your blog that you “discovered” this in the stored procedures included with SharePoint.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. It actually was not cut off it was just the way the margins worked on the blog. I changed it around a little to make it all fight.

Thanks again!

Abhiskek,

You are absolutely correct. At the time when I wrong this article I believed it was dependent on the crawl but it is just dependent on the Office Search Service being configured correctly.

If you stop the Office Search Service and attempt to do what you outlined above, you will notice nothing works.

Thank you for the clarification.

Paul Liebrand