Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 23: Personalization Services in SharePoint Products and Technologies 633
Point Portal Server because by copying and holding the user profiles in SharePoint
Services, you are free to create new SharePoint-specific profile objects without
extending the Active Directory schema. In addition, there is no performance
decrease on your domain controllers by not servicing user profile requests from
SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Finally, by not writing back to the Active Directory,
we do not turn SharePoint into a meta-directory service that would create additional
management and security issues.
A user profile based on Active Directory information can contain values in profile
properties that are mapped to Active Directory or are unique to SharePoint Portal
Server. Active Directory is used to uniquely identify users and resources on the
network. By importing user profile information from Active Directory, you keep a
single central repository for storing SharePoint-specific user information within your
organization.
To import user profile information, you must first configure the import settings.
You set up an import account for a specific server running Active Directory directory
service in your organization. Then you enable full or incremental imports and schedule
when those imports should regularly occur.
After you have configured the import settings, you can import user profile
information from the list of actions in the Profile and Import Settings section on the
Manage Profile Database page, which is shown in Figure 23-2. You can also stop any
import currently in progress and view a log of past imports.
F23xr02
Figure 23-2 Manage user profiles on the Manage Profile Database page
This page has two views. The Active view includes all active user profiles that
were imported during the last full import. The Missing from import view includes
the user profiles that were imported in the past but were not imported in the previous
three full imports because the user profile information was not available from