User Mapping Between Web Space Server and Sharepoint Service

Microsoft Windows uses its domain controller (Active Directory) to manage user identity, and most of the applications from Microsoft and many other third party vendors use Active Directory by default. For example, Sharepoint uses the authentication model built-in with IIS, for user authentication and permission. In a out-of-box environment, there is no form based authentication (by session cookie) for a web application, so any client application communicating with the web server must use either Basic Authentication (if enabled in IIS), NTLM or Kerberos.

Web Space Server has the capability of using the same Active Directory for authentication, which can be configured via control panel of administrator. It can also import Active Directory users into Web Space Server user database. However, in order to loosen the dependency on this configuration, Sharepoint add-on has its own Active Directory configuration for user mapping.

The mapping is to retrieve a user name in windows domain for a given portal user with matching email by default. Consider that an Active Directory lookup by email id is defined in the user attribute of Web Space Server. If the email id is found, the user name will be available in DOMAIN\USRENAME format. This user name is used to perform secure search on indexed Sharepoint data in both Membership portlet and Search portlet.

To Add a User on Active Directory to Web Space Server

Consider that Active Directory on the Sharepoint site (in this example, nicp123.wss.test.com) has a user named Paul with the email ID paul@wss.test.com. To add the user to Web Space Server, you need to create a new user on Web Space Server with paul@wss.test.com as the email ID. Then you need to login to Web Space Server, with paul@wss.test.com as the username, and add the Sharepoint Membership Portlet to your page. The Sharepoint Membership Portlet displays the Sharepoint sites for which the user is registered.

When an email ID is defined as the Authentication Search Filter (that is when the Authentication Search Filter is mail=@email_address@), only the email ID of the user registered on Web Space Server and the email ID of the user in the Active Directory on the Sharepoint site need to match. Any other user information and the password are not required to be identical.

1. Log in to Web Space Server as the admin user.

2. Navigate to Control Panel -> Users under Portal category.

3. Click Add.

4. Specify the user details.

   In this example, type paul@wss.test.com as the email ID.

5. Click Save.

6. Select Password under User Information.

7. Specify a password and click Save.