Beginning SharePoint® 2007 Administration: Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 and Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007

8.1. Managing User Profiles in MOSS

When working in any type of organization, you often need to get more information about a particular user. For example, you may read a document written by a user and need to ask the author for more information, or you may need to send an e-mail to a project manager responsible for developing a solution that is of interest for your own work. So, how do you find more information about people today? Most likely you are doing things like checking the address list in Outlook, looking at the Employee List on an intranet, or contacting the switchboard, asking for the phone number of this person. The most commonly requested information is:

• e-mail address

• Phone numbers: Office phone, mobile phone, and so on.

• Organizational information: What department, group, or team does the user belong to?

• Responsibilities: Who is the manager for this department? Who is the project leader?

• Expertise: Who can I ask about a specific subject?

SharePoint solves this in a much better way! Whenever you see a name listed as a user (for example, the author of a document or the last person modified the Customer address list), simply click the user's name and you will get all publicly available information. Or if you don't see the name listed, you can search for the user. This will save you a lot of time, not to mention the frustration of having to chase around the network resources or find someone with the information needed.

So, where is this information stored? A good guess would ...