SharePoint Tip of the Month

December 2010: Leverage SharePoint 2010 Functionality to Empower Users to Maintain their Contact Information

In most organizations, managing employee data is a monumental task that tends to be the Human Resource department’s responsibility. From the initial gathering of lots of historical and contact information to maintaining that information as it changes over time, this can be a time and resource consuming part of employment. While a lot of data is static, such as employment history or birthdays, other data, like our employees’ addresses, office and mobile phone numbers or emergency contact information may change as time passes.

Contact information, in particular, is a crucial component of an employee record that can change over time. People get new phone numbers, move offices or homes, maybe even make life changes that require changing their emergency contact information. Updating these fields in the system of record is often cumbersome and still requires paper forms and manual human intervention.

Many organizations, in particular those who have deployed SharePoint, use Active Directory as at least one of their systems of record for employee information, some as the primary or sole system. We have also found that many of those companies also use Microsoft Exchange for email. And so, where do users go most often when they need to find another employee’s phone number or email address? The Outlook Address Book, which is usually populated by information from Active Directory.

While there were some tools provided by third-party vendors, such as Bamboo Solutions’ User Profile Sync, to allow users to manage certain AD fields from SharePoint 2007, this functionality just became more simple and straightforward right out of the box with SharePoint 2010. Using the write back functionality of the User Profile Service Application in SharePoint 2010 allows AD and SharePoint administrators to work together to designate certain fields that are editable within the user-friendly SharePoint 2010 My Profile interface. (Find procedures for configuration at TechNet and Harbar.net.) These updates can then be synchronized back to Active Directory and, ultimately, to the Outlook Address Book without any administrative or HR intervention after the initial configuration.

The process goes something like this:

• My phone number changes.
• It’s still listed in the Outlook Address Book with the old number:

• Instead of the previous, manual procedure to update my number by contacting the helpdesk or filling out an HR form, I go to My Profile in SharePoint 2010.
• I update my phone number and save changes:

• After the next profile synchronization timer job (configurable within SharePoint) and Active Directory update to the Exchange Address Book (which defaults to 5 a.m. daily), my phone number is updated in the Outlook Address Book:

With just a few steps, all completed without administrative intervention, I’ve updated my contact information. Now when people search for me within the Outlook Address Book, they will see the new number.

This is just an example of permitting a single field to be updated by users. We can also utilize custom field mappings and select additional fields from AD for our users to manage. Here at Abel Solutions, we’ve empowered users to be able to update their Emergency Contact Name and Emergency Contact Number within their My Profile and set that field to only be viewable by their Manager, all using out of the box functionality with no custom development.

Give some thought to implementing this functionality - empowering your users to take control of their data - and take some burden off your HR department.

This month’s tip contributed By Sandar Van Laan, Abel Solutions’ newest Senior SharePoint Consultant.