Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 14: Shared Services 343
Note The only time the user experience is not seamless is when the user
clicks to go to his My Site from a child portal site and then wants to navigate
back. Usually in the upper-right corner of the portal site, there is a link
to go up to the level above where he is. For a user’s My Site, this link will
always be the root of the corporate, or parent, portal site. If the user comes
from a different portal site and wants to use the link, it might be somewhat
awkward. In this instance, the user should use the browser’s Back button to
return to the site he was on.
Configuring Shared Services
To use shared services, you first must enable shared services on the server farm.
Shared services provide common storage and management capabilities for alerts,
audiences, user profiles, My Sites, and search. If you run a multiple portal site environment
on your server farm without activating shared services, you are required to
manage each of the preceding issues separately on each portal site.
Shared services can be enabled from any server in the farm from which you
can access SharePoint Central Administration. Usually, it is configured from a frontend
Web server.
Note After you enable shared services, you cannot easily change the
selections that you are making in the following steps. Be sure to make
appropriate decisions for your organization before continuing.
To enable shared services
1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to SharePoint Portal Server, and
then click SharePoint Central Administration.
2. On the SharePoint Portal Server Central Administration page, in the Component
Configuration section, click Manage shared services for the
server farm.
3. On the Managed Shared Services page, in the Shared Services Provider section,
click Provide shared services.
4. In the Portal site that provides shared services list, click the name of the
corporate portal site as shown in Figure 14-3.