Step by Step – How to Prepare SharePoint 2010 Developer VM for People Search

Recently, I was working on SharePoint 2010 environment and needed  to make Developer VM ready for People Search Customization. Here are the high level steps I had followed to configure People & Expertise Search on my VM. Please note that this article requires good level of understanding of how to configure required services and service applications mentioned in pre-requisites to support SharePoint 2010 search based applications. My intention of this article is reference for me to have whole process documented for me in future.

• Pre-requisites
  • Make sure Managed Metadata Service and Managed Metadata Service Application is Configured (Although this is optional, it’s important to support Multi-value User Profile Properties). Refer to this article for detailed step by step guide.
  • Make sure User Profile Service and User Profile Service Application are Configured and User Profile Sync Service is Configured. Refer to this article for detailed step by step guide.
  • Make sure Search Service and Search Service Application is Configured is configured
  • Make sure Enterprise Search Center (site collection with Enterprise Search Center template) is created. Only Enterprise Search Center template allows you to search for people with OOB configuration

• Prepare AD for People Search
  • Create Sample AD Users => Ensure all properties are filled out (visit all the tabs – General, Address, Telephones, Organization etc.)

• Upload Pictures to the AD without Outlook or Exchange
  • Make sure all pictures are 144×144 pixels and less than 10 KB
  • Download ADPhotos Trial Software to upload pictures to AD – http://www.dovestones.com/download/
  • Run ADPhotos tool and upload all the pictures to AD thumbnailphoto property

• Map User Profile Properties from User Profile Service Application Admin Page
  • Visit Manage User Profile Service Application and Click on Manage User Properties in People Section
  • Update following properties and map AD fields as mentioned below:
    • Mobile Phone => Mobile
    • Home Phone => home phone
    • Picture => thumbnailPhoto

• Perform User Profile Sync and Import Pictures
  • Run Full User Profile Synchronization
  • Run this PowerShell command to force SharePoint to update the User Profile Database – This will create the thumbnails that are used in My Sites and the User Profile Service. This creates thumbnails from the user profile images saved in the My Sites User Profile pictures library => Update-SPProfilePhotoStore –MysiteHostLocation http://sp2010vm/my -CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos 1
  • Ensure all the properties including Pictures are available in User Profiles

• Provision My Sites for each users and ensure My Profile displays valid picture, user profile properties, and org browser.
  • Remember Org Browser is driven by Manager field. Please populate it in AD.
  • Plan to populate all the additional User Profile Properties like Skills, About Me, Ask Me About etc.

• Perform Search Crawl and Validate People Search
  • Perform Full Crawl including My Sites and User Profiles
  • OOB People Search should return People Data including Pictures

That’s it!!