SharePoint User Group UK

Hi,

I'm working on converting our existing bespoke straight ASP intranet over to Sharepoint, I'm using WSS for budgetary reasons, and while I'm very impressed with Sharepoint generally, I've one problem area that I would really welcome assistance with.

Our existing intranet has a database-derived staff listing, with phone/email/job title info, and I want to implement a similiar listing in Sharepoint.  We are planning to use Windows authenticaton.  I've added a few Windows users to Sharepoint, filled in the various columns in the People and Groups page (Name, Title, About Me etc etc) but how can a produce a staff listing based on this data - I know WSS doesn't have a user profile database, but this info is obviously stored somewhere?  I really need programmatic access to these fields..

I've considered using forms authentication (and storing the contact data in a database) but it seems using forms authentication will break other functionality (search/office integration) so I'm reluctant to go down that route.  Using MOSS will greatly add to our costs (we're a charitable organisation) so I'm keen to explore other possibilities first.

Really grateful for any advice.

James Drever.
Field Studies Council.

Hi James,

The user information in WSS V3 is stored in a special list called "User Information List".  You can only access this programatically.  For example:

// assumes you have SharePoint context and the top level web

// retrieve an instance of the user information list
Microsoft.SharePoint.SPList list = web.Lists["User Information List"];

// get the target user
Microsoft.SharePoint.SPUser user = web.SiteUsers[“domain\\username”];

// get the list item for the target user
Microsoft.SharePoint.SPListItem userInfo = list.Items.GetItemById(user.ID);

// get the property value
string propertyValue = userInfo["PropertyName"].ToString();

Hope this helps

Dave

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My SharePoint Blog http://www.davehunter.co.uk

Thanks very much for the helpful reply, Dave.

Having managed to get search working with forms authentication, I've decided to sacrifice the finer points of Sharepoint/Office integration and go with forms authentication.  But its really handy to know how to get access to the User Information List, because it is so poorly documented elsewhere.

Hi,
I've just started looking at a similar task;  i'm after a user list and an "in/out" status that the users assign themselves.  Ideally i don't want to have to code this, instead hope to utilise SP and Designer.

The user list is simple enough, just plug a datasource into one of the numerous UserProfile tables. The Shared Services table gives NT Name, email address and manager etc. 

However, my custom "Whereabouts" field that has been created in the Profile Properties page on SharedServices is more elusive.  I'm still trying to find the data store for Profile Properties which has all the AD and SP details required.

Any pointers gratefully received

Pete

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Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.

Hi Pete,

Sounds like your using MOSS and the User Profiles.  I hope your not querying the database tables as this is unsuported by Microsoft.  You should write a web part and use the API to query the values for the current user.  The following code gets the current user's profile and the in/out status.

// get the current site
SPSite site = SPControl.GetContextSite(HttpContext.Current);

// get the current user
SPUser currentUser = site.RootWeb.CurrentUser;

// get the server context and user profile manager
ServerContext context = ServerContext.GetContext(site);
UserProfileManager profileManager = new UserProfileManager(context);

// get the user profile for the current user
UserProfile profile = profileManager.GetUserProfile(currentUser.LoginName);

string inoutstatus = profile["inoutstatus"].toString();

You can set values by using profile["inoutstatus"] = "out"; and use profile.Commit(); to save

Hope this helps

Dave

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My SharePoint Blog http://www.davehunter.co.uk

Cheers Dave,
I had seen the methods for getting the user details you mentioned but not the variable for "inoutstatus" so thanks for that !  look forward to testing it out soon.

I'm very new to both  SP as well as C# and don't even have my development environment set up for Visual Studio - currently reading all the blogs and sites on VPC and VMWare (but that's a whole other licensing nightmare)  whilst trying SP out of the box stuff. 

Thanks for the tip and quick response !
Pete

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Nothing is as it seems, nor is it otherwise.

Hi Pete,

The "inoutstatus" was just an example of retrieving the property you created in the user profile.  The syntax

string propertyValue = profile["NameOfTheProperty"].toString();

"NameOfTheProperty" could be replaced with the name of any custom property you have created in the user profile.

Hope this makes sense

Dave

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My SharePoint Blog http://www.davehunter.co.uk