Thursday, March 27, 2014

User profile service and User Profile Synchronization service

User profile service and User Profile Synchronization service


This is a common question that many of SharePoint administrators think at the beginning, what is the difference between those and why they are used. Here is the answer for your question.

Explanation:

Coming to a background of  user Profiles

The service application is used to import the users from other directories such as LDAP, Novell, Tivoli, Unix into SharePoint. There are many changes in user profile included in service application from Moss 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and 2013.there are two ways that we can import users. In Moss 2007 we have only option is to import users from AD to SharePoint. We cannot update the user information Vice Versa. When Coming into SharePoint 2010 and 2013,we have both the options depends on our Farm. It should be like we can only get the user from AD->SharePoint  and It should be like the user update can be done from SharePoint t-> AD

FIM(Forefront identity manager)is also introduces in between AD and SharePoint in SharePoint 2010 to get the updates.

3 data bases will be created after creating the user profile service application, those are

·         Profile database – used to store user profile information.

·         Synchronization database – used to store configuration and staging information for synchronizing profile data from external sources such as the Active Directory Domain Services.

·         Social tagging database – used to store social tags and notes created by users. Each social tag and note is associated with a profile ID.

Difference of User profile service and User Profile Synchronization service

It’s very simple to understand

·         User profiles – contain detailed information about people in an organization. A user profile organizes and displays all of the properties related to each user, together with social tags, documents, and other items related to that user.

·         Profile synchronization – provides a reliable way to synchronize groups and user profile information that is stored in the SharePoint Server 2013 profile database together with information that is stored in directory services across the enterprise.

User Profile Service:

This service should be used, If we just want to import the users from AD only not to update the user information in a way from SharePoint->AD. It’s a single way of communication

User Profile Synchronization service:

This service should be used, If we  want to update the users information Vice versa. If the information for a user is updated in SharePoint, it should be reflected also in AD because of this service. It’s a Two way communication



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