Introduction:

In SharePoint 2010 we made an effort to make our pages more inviting by using people’s profile pictures to identify them throughout the product. We also tried to fix stretching/scaling problems we had with the photos in O12, and wanted to provide administrators with an easier way to manage these photos by storing them in a central location.

The SharePoint 2010 profile picture story:

SharePoint 2010 maintains three differently sized thumbnails of the profile pictures to be used in different contexts in the product. Out of box, we use the large (144x144 px) thumbnail on the profile page contact card, the medium (96x96 px) thumbnail on the people search results page and the small (32x32 px) thumbnail on various webparts and controls displaying people data like the Newsfeed, Colleagues, In Common With You, Note Board and many others.

When a user uploads his profile picture using the photo upload UI on the “Edit Profile” page, we resize the uploaded image to create 3 thumbnails of above mentioned sizes. We do not crop the images but just resize them maintaining the original aspect ratio, so that the largest dimension matches the target thumbnail dimension. If the original image is smaller than the target size, we save the small image as the thumbnail instead of stretching it to meet the target. Here are some examples to make this clear:

All the photo thumbnails are stored in a folder named “Profile Pictures” under a Picture Library called “User Photos” under the MySiteHost site collection. Thus, we now have a centralized photo store holding the profile images for every user.

We have the following naming convention for the thumbnail files:

The full URL of the medium thumbnail (like, “ https://<mysitehost>/User Photos/Profile Pictures/<domain>_<username>_MThumb.jpg”) is stored in the user profile database.

SharePoint 2010 expects all the 3 thumbnails to be stored at the same location and follow the above file naming convention. Depending upon the context where the photo is rendered, SharePoint decides what thumbnail size to use and generates that URL from the _MThumb URL.

What does this mean for you?

As we’ve seen, there is some fairly substantial change in how the profile photos work in 2010. Let’s discuss how this affects you and how to make some common scenarios work:

Upgrading from 2007:

In 2007, we did not have the 3 differently sized thumbnails and the picture URLs in the 2007 profile database did not follow the new naming convention. If you simply use the data from the 2007 database, SharePoint UI will use the same picture URL in every context because we wouldn’t know how to pick the correct thumbnail size. This way we will possibly render a big image in an area meant for a smaller image and end-up with a broken page layout. So, we need to migrate the data from 2007 database to the new 2010-style format. We provide a powershell cmdlet to be run after upgrade to achieve this. From the SharePoint Management console, run:

Update-SPProfilePhotoStore -MySiteHostLocation https://<my site host URL>

This cmdlet would iterate over each user in the profile database, download their existing profile picture, create 3 correctly sized thumbnails from it and save them with proper names under the My Site Host “User Photos” picture library. On successful thumbnail creation, it will update the picture URL in the profile DB to the URL of the medium sized thumbnail.

The cmdlet updates the profile database, so it needs to be run from an account with the following permissions:

1.       Connection permission to the User Profile Application on the Services farm. You can check this by going to Central Admin on the Services farm, navigating to the “Manage Service Applications” page, selecting the “User Profile Application” from the list, and then clicking the “Permissions” button in the UI. Only the accounts listed in there have permission to run UserProfile OM code. 

2.       “Manage Profiles” rights on the User Profile Application. Click on the “Administrators” button after selecting the “User Profile Application” and check the “Manage Profiles” check box.

Troubleshooting the cmdlet:

In case of any error in processing a given user’s picture (like the picture URL is invalid or unavailable), the cmdlet will skip the user and continue processing the remaining users. To capture a log of all errors and successes, you can turn on verbose and save the cmdlet output using Start-Transcript. Re-running the cmdlet will help fixing most cases, like, if a bunch of pictures were unavailable due to some network problem. The cmdlet skips picture URLs that follows the 2010 naming convention (that is, end in _MThumb), so re-running will only try to process the failed users.

Managing the photo store yourself:

Many of our customers want to create their own customized experience for photo upload and storage. If you are doing this, you should make sure to be compatible with the 2010 photo usage mechanism. This mainly boils down to following these rules:

1.       Create three thumbnail image files of the standard sizes (larger dimension = 32, 96 and 144). There’s no standard SharePoint OM/web service to create image thumbnails - you have to use your own resize mechanism to create them, you can also ask the user to upload 3 different images if you choose to.

2.       Name the image files following the SP 2010 naming convention (large ending in _LThumb, medium ending in _MThumb and small ending in _SThumb).

3.       Store all the 3 thumbnail images at the same location (because SharePoint will try to generate URLs for the other two thumbnails from the medium thumbnail)

4.       Use our OM to set the full URL of the medium (_MThumb) thumbnail as the PictureURL profile property for the user.

We hope this article will help you understand how SharePoint 2010 handles user’s profile photos and tune your existing photo upload and storage mechanism to work seamlessly with 2010. Please let us know any questions you have.

Written for SPSocial by,

Aditi Mandal, developer on SharePoint team.

But before we dive, let’s first look at how we think of the User in the User Profile Service, and how that leads us to solving this seemingly simple but fundamental need for rich user data in the profile store.

The “User” in the User Profile Service
In a typical business system, a user is determined by the identity presented to the system. Once this identity is confirmed, business system follows a certain set of rules and policies to give appropriate access. But there is rich information about this user’s activity in the system that the corporation overall can benefit from and the user can benefit from. In the User Profile Service, we think of the user at the center of it all as a “person” in the profile store who has a face -through the Profile, My Site, Newsfeed; has a web service that can be crawled - for example for Social search; a store backing the person up and; relationships and a networks in the enterprise.

Need for the User Profile Synchronization Service
With that mindset, that is “person” at the center, as the cornerstone of the User Profile Service architecture, the question becomes, how does one get started in accumulating interesting information about a user in the user profile store. That is where the User Profile Synchronization service comes in. User Profile Synchronization service facilitates bringing user and group information from directory sources, such as Active Directory. If there is additional interesting data in a business system, say employee ID or hire date, a Business Data Connectivity model can be used to augment the user records with this data. SharePoint 2010 utilizes the synchronization engine from Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) 2010. With SharePoint 2010, data can be written back to the directory source (AD or LDAP), if appropriate permissions are present. A popular scenario for this capability is to write back pictures uploaded in SharePoint back to say, Active Directory, which than can be used by Microsoft Outlook.

Inner workings of the User Profile Synchronization Service
User Profile Synchronization service undergoes a series of steps to stage data from the directory source, process it and bring it over to the user profile store.

Before understanding how data flows from the directory source to/from user profile store, let’s look at two key storage areas for the synchronization service:

1.      Connector Space (CS) is a staging area that contains representations of the designated objects from a connected data source and the attributes. Synchronization Service uses the connector space to determine what has changed in the connected data source and to stage incoming changes. Synchronization Service also uses the connector space to stage outgoing changes for export to the connected data source. Synchronization Service maintains a distinct connector space as a staging area for each management agent (connection in SharePoint 2010).

2.      Metaverse (MV) is a storage area that contains the aggregated identity information from multiple connected data sources, providing a single global, integrated view of all combined objects.

Now let’s consider a few examples to illustrate the data flow in common scenarios.

Scenario 1 – Full Sync: if Active Directory was the directory source and a full AD synchronization was being performed to bring users, groups and group membership information into the user profile store. 

Step 1: Import from Active Directory into Active Directory CS
In this step, data is brought into the Connector Space from the directory source.

Step 2: Import from User Profile Store into the SharePoint CS
Similar to step 1, in this step, data is brought into the Connector Space from the User Profile Store. Note that this step is conditional skipped for the very first full sync but is performed for any subsequent full syncs.

Step 3: Synchronization of data with the MV
This step moves and reconciles the data and its references into the MV. If there was existing data present in the MV, or if there were additional sources of data, for example, multiple forests, this is where reconciling of data and references will occur. This is also the step that transfers data to the SharePoint Connector Space to gets it ready for export to user profile store. 

Step 4: Export of data to user profile store
Once data is available in the SharePoint CS, it can now be moved to the user profile store. Note that some of this data requires further processing, for example, an employee’s manager is a reference to an incoming record, which might or might not have arrived before the employee. So SharePoint stages this data for further post-processing. Similar post-processing is required for groups and memberships.

Export is the most interesting and critical step from a SharePoint perspective, as this is the step that brings the data into the profile store. Before this step is reached, while much work is being done, there is no data flowing into the user profile store.

Step 5: Import and confirmation that the data has been received
Once the data is added to the profile store, a file is created to confirm its receipt back to the FIM synchronization engine. This file is also used to send data back, if there is additional data being sent back to AD, such as a picture.

Step 6: Synchronization of the data with MV
This step is similar in outcome as the previous synchronization Step 2. Now the data is being sent back to the MV from user profile store, including any data needed to be written back to AD. During this step, along with reconciling the data in the MV, any data needing to go back to AD is also prepared and marked ready for export in AD CS.

Step 7: Export to AD
Similar to Step 3, this step carries data back from AD CS to AD. This step will be a no-op if there is nothing being written back to AD.

Step 8: Import and confirmation that the data has been received
Similar to Step 5, this step closes the loop on data sent to AD.

 Scenario 2 – Full Sync with BCS data: if Active Directory was the directory source and along with AD data, additional data from business systems, such as SAP, was being brought in.

Along with bringing in the identity data for the user from a directory source, often additional interesting data might reside in business systems. For example, employee ID might exist in another system, which if brought into the user’s profile, can be used for interesting scenarios, for example combined with the Audience functionality in SharePoint.

While a directory source, such as AD or LDAP, is required to create users (rows) in profile store, additional data (columns) can be brought in using Business Connectivity Service BCS (previously Business Data Catalog) models. Documentation on how to create these models or configure them for synchronization is elsewhere and is beyond the scope of this document. What we describe here is how the data flow works in such scenarios.

For bringing in the data through a BCS model, in addition to the steps outlined in Scenario 1 above, following steps are performed, after Step 8.

Step 9: Import from BCS
BCS Data is joined, using the attribute selected for BCS connection creation, and then the property values for mapped properties are brought into the BCS Connector Space

Step 10: Sync BCS data to MV
BCS Data is synchronized into the MV as well as setup for export from SP CS to the Profile Store. Notice the one-way sync arrow, as the BCS data is only brought into the profile store. We do not write the data back to the respective BCS business system.

Step 11: Export of data to user profile store
Similar to step 4, BCS data is written into the user profile store.

Step 12: Import and confirmation of data receipt
Same as step 5, we close the loop with the SharePoint CS that the data has been received.

Scenario 3 – Incremental Sync: if Active Directory was the directory source, a full synchronization was completed earlier, and an incremental synchronization is being run.

The steps performed for incremental sync are exactly the same as full sync, except wherever a sync or import step were performed, it’s now replaced by Delta sync or Delta import, respectively. Only the changes flow through, not everything. Note that regardless of incremental or full synchronization, BCS synchronization will bring in all user data from the BCS source system.

 Few final thoughts
As discussed here, user profile synchronization is a key element of populating the ‘person’ in your profile store. It’s critical to understand and plan what information resides in the profile store, where it comes from, how it gets there and how it’s maintained. Behind each of these key questions is the complex process of bringing data to-from directory sources such as AD and business systems such as SAP. Our hope is that this discussion helped you gain a better understanding of how it all works and how the data flows, so you can manage and maintain the profile store more effectively.

1. The global top navigation bar

The global top navigation bar appears on every My Site page (on both the personal and public site) to provide a uniform navigation experience throughout the portal.

• Customizing the links

It is very easy to add or remove links on the global navigation and also to edit their display text and/or the address URL. As a site admin of the MySiteHost site collection, follow these steps:

1. Visit any page under the MySiteHost (like <mysitehost>/person.aspx) and click Site Actions --> Site Settings

2. Click on “Top link bar” under the “Look and Feel” section to add, remove, edit or reorder the links.

• Add Personalization Site links to global navigation

As in 2007, you can create “personalization sites” and configure these links to show up on the My Site global navigation bar for the users in the Target Audience. Here are some steps to do this (the basic idea remains the same as described in https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262716.aspx ) :

1. Create a personalization site by selecting Site Actions --> New Site, and choosing the “personalization site” template under the Enterprise tab.

2. Go to Central Administration --> Manage Service Applications --> User Profile Service Application --> Manage. In the Manage Profile Service page, go to “Configure Personalization Site” under “My Site Settings”. Create a “New Link” with the URL of the above site and scoped to a previously compiled Target Audience.

All members in the Audience will see a link for the personalization site pinned to their global navigation bar, like this:


The users can also visit a personalization site and add the site to their top navigation by clicking the “Pin this site” menu item, as below:

Users can remove these user-pinned personalization site links from their My Site top navigation, by selecting the “Unpin this site” option:

• Customizing the Look and Feel

We have a DelegateControl on our masterpages to hold the top navigation control. To customize the global nav area more deeply (for example, change the layout or add/remove some controls), you will need to create a new feature to bind your customized navigation control to this DelegateControl.

1. Under %Program Files%\Common Files\Microsoft Shared Debug\Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\FEATURES, create a new folder for your new feature, say MyNewNavFeature.

2. Under the MyNewNavFeature folder, create a feature.xml file to define a web feature that points to elements.xml, and an elements.xml file that binds the “GlobalNavigation” DelegateControl to a new ascx file (say, newtopnavigation.ascx) under controltemplates. Make sure that the Sequence attribute is set to a value < 100 so that this feature overrides the OOB navigation control.

Example feature.xml:
<Feature Id="<new guid>"
    Title="My Feature"
    Description="New Nav Feature"
    Version="1.0.0.0"
    Hidden="TRUE"
    Scope="Web"
    xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
    <ElementManifests>
        <ElementManifest Location="elements.xml"/>
    </ElementManifests>
</Feature>

Example elements.xml:
<Elements xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/">
  <Control Id="GlobalNavigation" Sequence="10" Controlsrc="~/_controltemplates/newtopnavigation.ascx" />
</Elements>

3. Create the newtopnavigation.ascx file under Web Server Extensions\14\TEMPLATE\CONTROLTEMPLATES. You can start with a copy of our out-of-box MySiteTopNavigation.ascx and tweak the styles and controls to suit your need.

4. Use feature stapling to staple this new feature to SPSPERS and SPSMSITEHOST site templates. You can run the following commands from powershell to install and enable your new feature:

a.       Install-SPFeature -path "MyNewNavFeature"
b.       Enable-SPFeature -identity "MyNewNavFeature" -URL https://<mysitehost> (Enables the new feature on the mysitehost)
c.       Enable the new feature on all personal sites:

$personalSites = get-spsite | where {$_.RootWeb.WebTemplate -eq "SPSPERS"}
foreach ($site in $personalSites) {Enable-SPFeature -Identity "MyNewNavFeature" -Url $site.Url}

 

2. The public page sub-navigation bar

Out of box, the sub-navigation bar appears on the 6 key profile pages and helps navigating between these pages easily.

• Customizing the links

Again, it is very easy to add or remove links from this navigation and also to edit their display text and/or the address URL. As a site admin of the MySiteHost site collection, follow these steps:

1. Visit any page under the MySiteHost (like <mysitehost>/person.aspx) and click Site Actions --> Site Setting

2. Click on “Quick Launch” under the “Look and Feel” section to add, remove, edit or reorder the links.

• Customizing the Look and Feel

To change the CSS styles on this menu, just override our default styles for .s4-sn defined in mysitelayout.css. If you want to change something on the control, edit each of the 6 profile pages in SPD and update the AspMenu control with ID=MySiteSubNavigationMenu.

Customizing the master pages and webparts remain mostly identical to that in 2007.

• Customizing the My Site Host

The public/profile pages (My Newsfeed, My Profile and other sub-navigation pages) belong to the My Site Host site collection.

The My Site Host uses use the mysite.master masterpage by default. To edit the out-of-box masterpage, you can open the site in SPD and edit the masterpage.

If you want to use your own masterpage, upload the new masterpage to the site’s Master Page Gallery under Site Settings. From Site Settings, enable the “SharePoint Server Publishing” feature under both “Site Collection features” and “Manage Site features”. This will add a “Master Page” link under the “Look and Feel” section and you can visit this link to apply your newly uploaded masterpage to the site.

To add or remove webparts from any of the My Site Host pages, the site admin could just manually add/remove appropriate webparts using the UI. This would be a one-time configuration step and all users will see this change since the My Site Host site collection is shared across all users. Of course, you can do this programmatically too.

• Customizing the personal sites

The “My Content” link takes the user to their personal site, which is a different site collection than the My Site Host.

The personal site uses the v4.master masterpage by default. Each user is the owner of their own personal site, and can follow the above steps to customize the masterpage on their individual sites. If the admin wants to customize the masterpage on every personal site, feature stapling is the way to go. The same holds true for adding/removing webparts on the personal site. Each user can use the site web part adder to add new webparts to his personal page. If the site admin wants to add/remove/preconfigure webparts on each user’s personal site, they’ll need to use feature stapling.

We sincerely hope that you will find this helpful as you start rolling out My Sites, as a part of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 deployment at your enterprise. Please let us know if you have any questions, and we would be glad to help you out.


-- Aditi (from the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Social Computing team)

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 has invested heavily in bringing power of social computing to customers. There are tons of cool social computing features in Microsoft SharePoint 2010 which empower people to work together in ways that are most effective for them.

We are seeing incredible interest from customers for these social computing capabilities. Customers are eagerly trying out the features with beta builds. They are constantly reaching out to us with feedback and questions.. We decided to create a team specific blog so that we could get in touch with the customers and respond to most common questions, as well as share future directions based on feedback.

We hope that you will find the content here very useful..! Happy reading..! J

- Gaurav (Microsoft SharePoint Social Computing team)