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Using SPUserUtil to synchronize SharePoint user Display Names and Email addresses with the information in Active Directory

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Using SPUserUtil to synchronize SharePoint user Display Names and Email addresses with the information in Active Directory

SPUserUtil will mean either WSSUserUtil or SPSUserUtil respectively (WSSUserUtil is used to administer Windows SharePoint Sites on a standalone WSS Farm/Virtual server OR Windows SharePoint sites in the same virtual server of a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 site.) SPSUserUtil is a superset of WSSUserUtil, designed for working on SharePoint Portal Server Areas.

 

Consider the following:

  • We have an account named MYDOMAIN\margie.murphy.

  • This account has permissions on various SharePoint sites.

  • This accounts NT Login Name changes to MYDOMAIN\margie.richie for one of many different reasons (In our scenario, Margie married a really cool guy with the last name of Richie :))

  • The NT Login Name for this account was synchronized with Active Directory using the steps provided in my previous post :) Using SPUserUtil to update accounts when the NT Login Name changes

SharePoint provides a feature for users to use different Display Names and Email addresses across the site collections they are members of. This information is cached in the tp_Title and tp_Email columns in the UserInfo table for every site collection in which the user has permissions. The individual user can update their information or the administrator can do it by visiting the siteusrs.aspx page for every site collection. This allows a user to utilize say, different email addresses for alerts on the same SharePoint Virtual Server but in different site collections. One scenario is where I may want to alert myself of changes to content on one site collection using my work email address, while content from another site collection should send alerts to my personal email address.

 

The problem with this, is that most enterprise customers I have worked with find this feature really annoying :). They prefer the users account display name and email address to be consistent to what the have established in their corporate environment, and it is an administrative nightmare to to update this information across literally 10's of 1000's of site collections. It also confuses users of SharePoint when their information changes (Say a contractor becomes a full time employee, etc). It can also cause administrative headache for administrators when they try to change security information on their sites (in some places we try to look up the account with the old NT Login Name). You can however, re-sync SharePoint with the current information in active directory by using SPUserUtil.

To perform this action, there are actually two different ways of accomplishing this.

Using the displayname= and email= attributes in the UserMap file

  1. See my previous post (Using SPUserUtil to update accounts when the NT Login Name changes) to familiarize yourself with creating a proper UserMap file.

  2. Set the displayname= and email= attributes appropriately, similar to the following example.

     

    <?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>

    <!DOCTYPE SPUserUtilUserMapFile>

    <!--This file represents the user information generated and used by SPUserUtil-->

    <users>

      <user loginname="MYDOMAIN\margie.richie" newloginname=""displayname="Margie Richie" email="margie.richie@MYDOMAIN.com"/>

    </users>

  3. Run WSSUserUtil to update the information:

    WSSUserUtil –o update –url https://myserver -usermap users.xml –ac

    This will find the user on the site collections, and update the displayname and email address to what is defined in the XML file for the user.

    Note: The –ac switch tells SPUserUtil to perform the operation on “ALL” site collections on the SharePoint Virtual Server. If you only wanted to perform it on the https://server/sites/thesite then remove the -ac switch and specify the site using the –url option.

Using the -adu switch to query AD for the current values

  1. See my previous post (Using SPUserUtil to update accounts when the NT Login Name changes) to familiarize yourself with creating a proper UserMap file.

  2. It is not necessary to specify or even include the displayname= and email= attributes using this method. All we need is the loginname= attribute as in the following example.

     

    <?xml version="1.0" standalone="no"?>

    <!DOCTYPE SPUserUtilUserMapFile>

    <!--This file represents the user information generated and used by SPUserUtil-->

    <users>

      <user loginname="MYDOMAIN\margie.richie" />

    </users>

  3. Run WSSUserUtil to update the accounts in the UserMap file with information from Active Directory:

    WSSUserUtil –o update –url https://myserver -usermap users.xml –ac -adu

    This will find the user on the site collections, and update the displayname and email address to what is currently set in Active Directory.

    Note: In this example, I’m using the –adu switch. This tells SPUserUtil to lookup the displayname and email address from Active Directory, and bypass what is in the usermap file if it is defined. Again the –ac switch will perform the operation on all site collections.

It may seem silly to just go through all those steps for a single user, but if you need to do a batch of users, I personally think WSSUserUtil and SPSUserUtil is the way to go.

Try this out for fun, do it Wicked Kung Fu style

If you want to just update all the users across your entire SharePoint Virtual Server in one whopping swoop try the following (But be sure you have a backup first in case you don't like the results!!! )"

WSSUserUtil –o analyze –url https://myserver -usermap users.xml –asu -ac

Note: In this example, I’m using the –asu and -ac switch. This tells SPuserUtil to enumerate over All site collections and just dump what we find for all site collection users into the usermap. You don't need to specify the -r swtich (Recursive web dive) as we don't care where and what web they are actually on. The end result, is that we will get a unique record for every user found in the usermap across all site collections.

Then just issue the following command:

WSSUserUtil –o update –url https://myserver -usermap users.xml –ac -adu

And every single user defined in the users.xml file will be updated in SharePoint

Hope this helps!!!!

Keith Richie

For more information in regards to the Schema of the Various SharePoint Tables, see the Databases section in the SharePoint Products and Technologies SDK at:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/spptsdk/html/SPPTWSSDatabases_SV01072208.aspp

SPUserUtil is contained in the The SharePoint Utility Suite at:
https://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/downloads/components/detail.asp?a1=724

For more information on Windows SharePoint Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003:
https://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

Comments

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2006
    SharePoint does not provide a way to update changes to a users NT Login Name easily users en-masse.  SPUserUtil can automate the task for you to update batches of users.

  • Anonymous
    February 18, 2006


    I don't know what the heck is up with the blog service here, but I can't for the life of me, get...

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2006
    Thorough and detail blog post by Mr Keith Richie on how to cure the pain that is email and display name...

  • Anonymous
    February 28, 2006
    Tipp von Keith Richie
    Using SPUserUtil to synchronize SharePoint user Display Names and Email addresses...

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2006
    When SPSUserUtil encounters with an account on SharePoint which is no longer present in domain, it just gives an error message 'User cannot be found. Error in ADUpdateUsers'. Is there any way to log the account information in log file and let script go to next account rather than aborting the wholeoperation?

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2006
    I'm working on finalizing some changes to SPUserUtil tomorrow (Or tonight hopefully :))

    I've made an effort to include some additional exception handling based on useability feedback such as this.  I'll ensure I cover this scenario as well.

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2006

    I’ve decided that I’m not going to put much more effort into the 2.5 incarnation of SPUserUtil for...

  • Anonymous
    May 16, 2006

    &#160;
    Une question m'a &#233;t&#233; pos&#233; r&#233;cemment concernant la probl&#233;matique du changement de nom d'un Groupe...

  • Anonymous
    May 17, 2006
    Removing Accounts from SharePoint using SPUserUtil
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  • Anonymous
    July 20, 2006
    Understanding SharePoint - Part 2 - The Infamous Query Plan Bug and The Origins of SPSiteManager
    This...

  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2006
    SharePoint Account Management using SPUserUtil - Part 5 - Handling NT Login Name ChangesOriginally Posted...

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2006
    SharePoint Account Management using SPUserUtil - Part 6 - Synchronizing Display Names and Email Addresses...

  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2006
    Une question m'a été posé récemment concernant la problématique du changement de nom d'un Groupe dans

  • Anonymous
    January 05, 2008
    PingBack from http://birthdays.247blogging.info/?p=3553

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2009
    PingBack from http://www.keyongtech.com/1981698-updating-user-email-addresses-wss

  • Anonymous
    February 25, 2009
    PingBack from http://www.whitworth.org/2006/09/08/using-spuserutil-to-synchronize-sharepoint-user-display-names-and-email-addresses-with-the-information-in-active-directory/