User Profile Service and User Profile Synchronization Service
Introduction
User profile service and User Profile Synchronization service.
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This is a common question that many of SharePoint administrators think at the beginning, what is the difference between those and why they are used. Here is the answer to your question.
Explanation
Coming to a background of user profiles.
The service application is used to import the users from other directories such as LDAP, Novell, Tivoli, Unix into SharePoint. There are many changes in user profile included in service application from Moss 2007 to SharePoint 2010 and 2013. There are two ways that we can import users. In Moss 2007 we have the only option is to import users from AD to SharePoint. We cannot update the user information or vice versa. When coming into SharePoint 2010 and 2013, we have both the options depends on our farm. It should be like we can only get the user from AD->SharePoint and it should be like the user update can be done from SharePoint -> AD
FIM (Forefront Identity Manager) is also introduced in between AD and SharePoint in SharePoint 2010 to get the updates.
Three databases will be created after creating the user profile service application and those are:
· Profile database – used to store user profile information.
· Synchronization database – used to store configuration and staging information for synchronizing profile data from external sources such as the Active Directory Domain Services.
· Social tagging database – used to store social tags and notes created by users. Each social tag and note is associated with a profile ID.
User Profile Service vs User Profile Synchronization Service
It’s very simple to understand:
· User profiles – contain detailed information about people in an organization. A user profile organizes and displays all of the properties related to each user, together with social tags, documents, and other items related to that user.
· Profile synchronization – provides a reliable way to synchronize groups and user profile information that is stored in the SharePoint Server 2013 profile database together with information that is stored in directory services across the enterprise.
User Profile Service
This service should be used, If we just want to import the users from AD only not to update the user information in a way from SharePoint->AD. It’s a single way of communication.
User Profile Synchronization Service
This service should be used, If we want to update the user's information or vice versa. If the information for a user is updated in SharePoint, it should be reflected also in the AD because of this service. It’s a two-way communication.
- See more at: http://expertsharepoint.blogspot.de/2014/03/user-profile-service-and-user-profile.html
Note: If you find a different solution, please report it as a comment on this post. This will be useful to the SharePoint Community. Be sure to double-verify it: undo your solution and verify that the problem comes back, then redo it and verify that the problem goes away.