Atlanta .NET Regular Guys

Add Forms Based Authentication users into your Shared Service Providers User Profiles

When you setup a SharePoint 2007 site with Forms Based Authentication (FBA) you have multiple options of where to store your user profiles.  The two most common places to store the profiles are the User Information List located in each site collection or the User Profile store of a Shared Service Provider (SSP).

Here are the steps to be able to add your forms based authentication users to your Shared Service Provider.  After you complete these steps the Shared Service Provider will look for those users when using the Add User Profile functionality.  The reason you must perform these steps is because the SharePoint Web Applications only look in a single authentication type per Web Application Zone.

1. Create a web application for your site that uses Windows Based Authentication
2. Extend the web application to also have a zone for forms based authentication
   
   Here is a great link for steps 1 and 2: Office SharePoint Server 2007 - Forms Based Authentication (FBA) Walk-through - Part 1 by Dan Attis
   
3. Create a Shared Service Provider for that application.
4. Extend the Shared Service Provider with the same settings as the web application
   
   NOTE: To do this step just follow the same steps you used above for extending a web application.  The Shared Service Provider is just in a web application.
   
    
   
   
The following mappings were used for the example:
http://<machinename>:1111 - Windows Based Authentication Shared Service Provider
http://fbassp.devcow.com - Forms Based Authentication Shared Service Provider



5. Add a forms based authentication user to the Full Control Policy for that Zone in order to log into the site
   
   
   
6. Log into the site and add the forms based authentication users that are required for the site.
   
   NOTE: Make sure when you log into the site you use the SSP link such as http://fbassp.devcow.com/ssp/admin
   
7. Add a user using the right provider name and user name such as
   
   AspNetMembershipProvider:bschwartz
   
8. Once the users are entered in the system they will show up in the people picker on the Windows Based Authentication site.