How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Posted Monday, March 29, 2010 1:59 PM by CoreyRoth

Since I’m talking about Enterprise Search tonight at OKCSUG, I thought I would write up a quick post on the steps you need to follow in order to get People Search working in SharePoint 2010.  The critical piece of course is getting the User Profile Synchronizations service working.  There are plenty of posts about it, so I’m not going to go into the details of how to get that part of it work.  SharePointDevWiki and MSDN do a pretty good job of getting you started.  The main thing is you want your Forefront Services started and looking something like this.

PeopleSearchForefrontServices

In Central Administration, on Services on Server, you want your User Profile services to show that they are started.

PeopleSearchUserProfileStarted

If your server doesn’t look like what you have above, then you probably have a problem.  With Beta 2, if you have made any changes to these services or so much as looked at them, you will need to reinstall SharePoint. Don’t bother trying to get it to work, because it will never happen.  Just ask twitter, it’s true. Don’t waste your time, just reinstall now.

If everything is running correctly, you need to set up a profile synchronization connection.  This is somewhat similar to the process you used in MOSS 2007, but they updated it a bit to make it a bit more user friendly.  For example, you don’t have to specify LDAP queries to get the objects you want any more.  Just specify an account on the domain, and then pick the object you want to import using a tree viewer.  The SharePointDevWiki article has some good screenshots on setting this up for the beta.  However, Harbar by far has the most definitive guide on getting User Profile sync working (follow it exactly).  If you have any issues with JavaScript errors on the screens, hit F12 and use IE7 mode and it will probably work.  Once you have configured your connection, start a new synchronization job and wait for it to finish.

At this point you have user profiles, but you can’t search them yet.  You’re dying to see all of the new features in People Search, so we have to do a crawl to make that happen.  At this point, it’s much like MOSS 2007.  In fact it uses the same protocol handler, sps3.  Hopefully, you know where they moved Search Administration to now that they have gotten rid of the SSP.  If not, it’s under Central Administration –>Service Applications –> Search Service Application –> Manage button.  Once you are here, go to Content Sources.  You should see one content source called Local SharePoint Sites.  Depending on how you installed, this may be correct or it may not be.  For start addresses, you should see something like http://server-name and sps3://server-name.  Here is what mine looks like.

PeopleSearchStartAddress

Sometimes, the sps3 address won’t be there, so you need to add it.  You can add it to this content source or create another one.  It really doesn’t matter.  Before we crawl, we need to check some new settings to make sure our crawl account has the necessary permissions.  Sometimes, SharePoint will take care of some of this for you other times it won’t.  The first thing you need to do is go to Central Administration –> Security –> Specify web application user policy.  Here, you need to make sure that your default content access account has Full Read permission.  I’ll take this as yet another time to remind you that your crawl account should not have administrator permissions.  It should look something like this.

PeopleSearchFullRead

The next thing we need to do is grant this account permissions to the User Profile Service Application.  To do that, go to the Service Applications page, click on User Profile Service Application (click next to it to highlight it, don’t click on the link).  When its highlighted, click on the Administrators button at the top.  This gives you a window that looks like this.

PeopleSearchUserProfileAdministrators

If your default content access account (crawl account) is not listed, add it and then select the checkbox Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers.  If you don’t complete this step, you will likely get an access denied error message when you crawl.

Once it’s created, you need to do a full crawl.  If you haven’t created an Enterprise Search Center yet, now is a good time to do so.  Once you create it, click on the People tab and search for someone you know.  That’s all there really is to it.  If you have User Profile sync working, then the rest is easy.

This post has been updated for SharePoint 2010 RTM.

Comments

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Saturday, April 3, 2010 8:17 PM by Jeremy Thake

I can also confirm sometimes it isn't added, noticed that just this week. Thanks for @SPDevWiki mention ;-)

BTW top dev blog mate!

# We Know Nothing » Blog Archive » People search not working in SharePoint 2010

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Monday, September 13, 2010 3:17 AM by Belle

HI

Does it mean if I set up a new Profile Synchronisation connection, the account needs to have rights to SYNC back to Active Directory(AD) ? What if the account does not have rights to SYNC back to AD - does it mean I cannot do 'People search' in Sharepoint 2010 ?

Thanks.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Monday, September 13, 2010 8:49 AM by CoreyRoth

@Belle The account only needs rights to sync back to AD if you want it to do so.  People Search does not require that right to be able to search on people.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 1:20 PM by Arunkumar

very useful article..

Save my lot of time.

Thanks!

# SharePoint 2010: Die Standard-Suche « SharePoint and relevant Technologies

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 7:12 PM by Ronny A

Good post. Really helpful! Thanks for sharing!

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Tuesday, November 9, 2010 12:56 PM by Ikram

When I do the People Search, I get the results but cannot see their picture.  It seems that it is looking for something instead of the User Photo directory where the thumbnails are saved.  Is it /_Layouts/images/ folder.  How do I get pictures to show up when doing a Peopel search in Sharepoint 2010?

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, November 10, 2010 8:43 AM by CoreyRoth

@Ikram Did you do an upgrade to SharePoint 2010?  If so, did you run the PowerShell command to migrate your photo store?

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Friday, November 26, 2010 10:27 AM by gokyu

this article saved my day..

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Thursday, January 13, 2011 11:43 PM by Johan Kruger

I finally have people results, thanks for the blog!! seems my problem was the "Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers" step.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Friday, April 15, 2011 12:37 PM by Francis

Don't forget to reset IIS after granting the permission!

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Friday, April 29, 2011 2:21 AM by Amit

I am getting following error --

Error message -- sps3://domainname

The object was not found. ( HttpStatusCode NotFound The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found. )

Please advice.

I am able to crawl other url's starting with http://domain name

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Monday, May 2, 2011 11:02 AM by CoreyRoth

@Amit for sps3 i typically use the server name and not a custom domain name.  Make sure that the name you are using is listed in the alternate access mappings page as well.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 7:54 AM by Amit

Hello Corey,

I have tried by doing the same but got the error saying

Error message -- sps3://netbiosname

The object was not found. ( HttpStatusCode NotFound The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found. )

I have modified the AAM accordingly

Regards

Amit

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Monday, May 9, 2011 10:29 AM by Jill

Awesome, thanks so much!

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Wednesday, May 25, 2011 2:19 PM by Chris

Amit,

Try to use SPS3S:// you must be using SSL.

# Set up People Search « lmgtfyi

Tuesday, May 31, 2011 12:37 PM by Set up People Search « lmgtfyi

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Saturday, June 25, 2011 11:04 AM by Andreas

any way to make the sps3 url point to an external url name?

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Friday, July 1, 2011 9:45 AM by CoreyRoth

@Andreas you know I've never tried to use sps3 with a remote server.  I would think it would work but you never know.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Friday, August 12, 2011 12:31 PM by Fernando Hunth

Could I add to the people search results , another groups of people that are not present on AD?

Suppose I have a Contact list or an Excel file or an XML File with Customers. I 'd like to include them on search results. Could it be done? How?

Thanks

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Thursday, August 25, 2011 10:15 AM by Marshall

I just moved my mysites to their own web app, and re-created the search site on that same web app. Doing a search from the main site works fine, and it pulls from the new web app. However, the seach box on the mysites pages still tries to pull search results from the old (nonexistant) search site. How do I change where the search box is looking for results?

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Thursday, August 25, 2011 1:41 PM by CoreyRoth

@Marshall Go into your User Profile Service Application and edit the My Site settings.  There is a URL there where you specify which search center to use on your My Site host.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Tuesday, August 30, 2011 10:54 AM by CoreyRoth

@Fernando No, people search results really won't work there.  Your best bet is to look at implementing some type of custom solution using the BCS.  It won't let you create results that look exactly like People Search but should come close.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Thursday, October 6, 2011 6:01 AM by Zhaph - Ben Duguid

Not sure why, but I don't appear to have the option of  "Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers" availble.

Turning on "Service application proxy for user profile related data." or "User Profile Application" seems to have resolved it however.

Thanks,

Ben

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Thursday, October 27, 2011 8:57 AM by veerendra

Thanks for posting the article,it is very much helpful

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Thursday, December 22, 2011 5:16 AM by Anis Ben Waddey @bwanis

Another way to give crawl account the Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers permissions via PowerShell

Get-SPServiceApplication

# DisplayName          TypeName             Id

# -----------          --------             --

# Secure Store Service Secure Store Serv... 35f29048-82db-4f4c-8654-fc0d40e3d6c8

# State Service App... State Service        75d3d324-2bf5-4be5-918c-cb263c5c38ea

# Managed Metadata ... Managed Metadata ... 2dbaadfb-2ca2-43a0-afa9-0562324caf6f

# Web Analytics Ser... Web Analytics Ser... 9aaf5391-5ae9-4e74-a1b1-7c34a0a1dc51

# ExcelServices Ser... Excel Services Ap... bc501c34-67a1-4e82-8232-4f791577b8d1

# Security Token Se... Security Token Se... 0651920e-f0fd-473f-851f-26d6b1e1e1f1

# Application Disco... Application Disco... 1c397a52-cc6e-42a9-9088-b013637c45c6

# WSS Usage Applica... Usage and Health ... b3b5960e-14fa-4a51-9cb6-e631079947a4

# Search Administra... Search Administra... 8cd38f68-6778-427f-aa72-076da9a080e2

# User Profile Service User Profile Serv... cbfdd920-2026-4d4f-8cb0-1457cfc9b270

# Search Service Ap... Search Service Ap... f252fa85-597a-49cc-83a6-e5a40f9c3a6c

$serviceapp = Get-SPServiceApplication cbfdd920-2026-4d4f-8cb0-1457cfc9b270

$security = Get-SPServiceApplicationSecurity $serviceapp -Admin

$principalUser1 = New-SPClaimsPrincipal -Identity "crawl_account_domain\crawl_account_login" -IdentityType WindowsSamAccountName

Grant-SPObjectSecurity $security -Principal $principalUser1 -Rights "Retrieve People Data for Search Crawlers"

Set-SPServiceApplicationSecurity $serviceapp -ObjectSecurity $security -Admin

# [SharePoint 2010 User Profile Service] ??????User Profile Service??????????????? | Ipark's SharePoint Blog

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Friday, March 2, 2012 7:27 AM by Vesku

How People Search in SharePoint 2010 handles multi-language metadata in user properties? What defines which language of the term is indexed?

# Why SharePoint 2010 search does not show some results? | Software

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Monday, April 2, 2012 10:49 PM by CoreyRoth

@Vesku I'm afraid I am not sure on that.  I haven't dealt with multiple language in a scenario like that before.

# SharePoint 2010 Search Troubleshooting « Lars Nielsen's Discoveries

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Saturday, October 13, 2012 10:47 PM by Chris

Hi Corey, just wanted to ask..

For the default OOTB People Search Box webpart, which managed property does it use by default when you type in that box?

Based on my research, it's using from ContentsHidden (if you want to add custom properties). But what else?

The reason is I want to make that box only search in Preferred Name, or Last Name, First Name.. Is that possible?

Thanks!

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Friday, October 19, 2012 3:35 PM by CoreyRoth

@Chris I think you will have to write a custom SearchBoxEx control to make that happen.

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Thursday, November 29, 2012 8:12 AM by subhash

Hi All,

Today we migrated some of our test users with a new domain, then we ran the search with full crawl. The user profiles are migrated successfully, but are not displayed in sharepoint search.

We can add those migrated users to a group, etc, with the help of people picker, but those users do not show up in sharepoint search like the other users.

Pls help !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks in advance……….

# UnderstandingtheServiceApplicationsofFASTSearchforSharePoint | Jeremy Thake Dev Blog

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# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Monday, February 10, 2014 4:20 PM by Joe

Thanks Chris.

This helped me

"Try to use SPS3S:// you must be using SSL."

# re: How to set up People Search in SharePoint 2010

Monday, July 7, 2014 9:02 AM by Paul Matthews

That solved my problem!! Even for SP2013. Thanks.

# Understanding the Service Applications of FAST Search for SharePoint | NothingButSharePoint.com

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# Enabling Expertise Search & User Profile Replication | KarthicMohan's Blog

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