Professional SharePoint® 2007 Development

8.3. SharePoint Audiences

SharePoint allows content providers to customize information by using audience targeting through a rules based system. An audience is a collection of users that someone wants to target. Audiences can be groups of people from the Windows security groups, or they can be groups that include people based on rules you set up. They are able to do this by using personalization sites to target users based on information in their user profiles. For example, an audience can be created that includes all members of the accounting department. Once that audience is created, it can then be used to target members of that audience in order to provide custom content to them. Pages and listings can be targeted to an audience to enhance the user experience and provide meaningful custom content. Figure 8-6 shows the list of audiences as they would appear in the Shared Service Provider.

In SharePoint 2007 you can perform audience targeting on a rules-based audience, Windows SharePoint Services groups, and memberships.

8.3.1.

8.3.1.1. Creating an Audience

Audiences can only be created and managed by the administrator from the Shared Services Administration page or by using the object model. To create an audience, follow these steps:

1. Inside the Shared Service Provider page click Audiences, and the Manage Audiences page comes up, which will allow you to manage and compile the audiences you have created.

2. To view one of the existing audiences, click the View Audiences link.