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Development on the SharePoint Platform
SharePoint User Manager (Version: X1.0)
Not sure about other people, but I find it quite time consuming when trying to manage users inside of Windows SharePoint Services sites, especially when the sites in the hierarchy have their security inheritance broken.  A number of customers end up breaking security inheritance at every opportunity and then hit this problem.

 

So, I am in the process of writing a SharePoint User Manager Windows Application in order to help out in this area!

 

Below is a screenshot of the utility to-date (Note: This is version X1.0 and as such has restricted functionality)

 

Note: The SharePoint Object model is not "remotable" so it has to be run on the SharePoint server itself.

 

In the Server textbox, you can control which portal is opened. i.e. If you leave the default, it will attempt to scan the default port (typically 80) and render out the sites from there.  If you had a portal on a different port that you want to examine, just enter "<server name>:<port>".  If I had a portal on port 100 on my development machine, I would enter "SPSNIGELBRI:100".  Then select the "Go" button.  Do not prefix with "HTTP://"

 

This should render out something like:

 

So, you can see all of the site collections on your portal.  Now, just drill through them and you should see what users have what roles on each of the sites and also receive an indication if security for the selected site is inherited from the parent or not.

 

 

This utility is just really an exercise into the SPUser object and displaying what information is available for each user.

 


 

Please leave me any comments on the utility to date in terms of functionality that you think would be useful to see!

 

Currently, for the next version, the following is intended to be working:

  • Edit selected user (able to change the name, email, site collection administrator, notes and roles)
  • Add a new user to the selected site
  • Delete a user from the selected site
  • Manage the site groups and gross site groups
  • View and manage the selected users configured Alerts
  • Double click the site will open the site in IE
  • Plus making the interface a bit nicer looking

 

Click HERE to download the X1.0 Version

or Download version X1.1

 

Please check back soon for an updated version!

 

Posted: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 10:01 AM by NigelBridport

Comments

Thomas Tomiczek said:

NICE tool. Could use some UI work, but the functionality is desperatly needed.
# November 30, 2004 10:17 AM

Arno Nel said:

Great Stuff :)
# November 30, 2004 11:01 AM

Arno Nel on Information Portals, Sharepoint Portal said:

# November 30, 2004 6:02 AM

Nigel said:

Yea, I take the comment about the UI on board Thomas.. Just trying to get the code working properly and then hope to make the UI cleaner (but i am not really a GUI developer but...) :-)

Thanks,
Nige.
# November 30, 2004 11:07 AM

SharePoint, SharePoint and stuff said:

# November 30, 2004 6:30 AM

SharePoint, SharePoint and stuff said:

Nigel Bridport hat ein Tool ver
# November 30, 2004 6:31 AM

Jason Dossett said:

Looks very useful. Seems like the power of tools like these (SharePoint explorer, for example) is diminished a little bit by requiring them to be run on the SharePoint server. Anybody know of any efforts to create a remoteable abstraction for SharePoint? I've done some simple things, but not a full blown API of any sort.
# November 30, 2004 1:18 PM

Nigel said:

The way to make them run remotely is really through writing your own custom web services to interact with the SharePoint Object Model.

Hmm.. Perhaps my next task!!!

Nige.
# November 30, 2004 1:26 PM

SharePoint Services Deployment Diary said:

# November 30, 2004 9:27 AM

John S. said:

EXCELLENT. Can't wait for the next versions...
# November 30, 2004 3:06 PM

Jason Dossett said:

Yeah, I understand you could use the web services, but wouldn't it be nice to have a truly remotable object model? Presumably there are reasons why tools like this get developed on top of the object model first (and therefore forced to run on the server) -- simpler interface, granular control, etc.

The web services are great for enterprise integration, but if something like this (a thick client that uses an object model that must run on the server) doesn't warrant using .NET remoting, what does that say about .NET remoting in general? Was Microsoft making a statement when they released WSS 2.0 without a remoteable object model?
# November 30, 2004 3:15 PM

andrew connell said:

# November 30, 2004 3:33 PM

Andrew Connell said:

Great idea Nigel! I've scoped a SharePoint admin utility that includes this type of functionality. In my first version [http://andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2004/07/26/421.aspx] I was implementing it with a Windows Forms application. Instead, I've decided to revert to the ASP.NET model. Everything in SharePoint is web, so why not make this web? I'll be following your progress. Great idea!
# November 30, 2004 8:35 PM

Point2Share said:

# November 30, 2004 5:22 PM

Amanda.Murphy's Weblog SharePoint InfoPath Xbox Ta said:

Nigel Bridport has released a very exciting Windows App to help improve the management of users for Windows SharePoint Services sites. Nigel was also very quick to offer his help in getting the user group going - so nice to meet others passionate about this...
# November 30, 2004 7:13 PM

Bob Mixon said:

Great tool Nigel. :)
# December 1, 2004 5:47 AM

Balle Brink said:

Hi, does this work om Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 as well?
# December 1, 2004 1:02 PM

Nigel said:

It will do.... in the next drop.
# December 1, 2004 2:14 PM

Wes Preston said:

Any chance the same functionality could be built into a web part? I'm working on a large enterprise rollout of SharePoint and am hoping to build a WSS site to house administration tools for the environment. It would also be nice to provide a tool to site administrators themselves on their own sites if wanted.

A great start on this really needed functionality.
# December 2, 2004 4:11 AM

Nigel said:

There is no reason why the code cannot be taken and put into a web part or connected parts. I will be releasing the code when it is complete.

If there was enough demand for the tool in web part form then...

Nige.
# December 2, 2004 7:38 AM

Il Blog di Paolo Pialorsi said:

# December 3, 2004 4:58 AM

Dor said:

Looks excellent! Just needs some more development, and it will be a hot tool for us SPS&amp;WSS admins. :) <br> <br>
# December 3, 2004 10:39 AM

Bil Simser said:

Nice stuff. I have a set of wrapper classes that I will be releasing (open source). They use SharePoint web services and basically provide domain objects to talk to SharePoint entities (like lists, doclibs, sites, users, etc.).

You're welcome to use them and hopefully we can blow out what is needed in the wrappers to support a tool like this. Eventually I would like to have all the functionality exposed so anyone can write a tool for the desktop or web without having to run it on the server.
# December 3, 2004 11:55 PM

EROL said:

Thanks for this tool EROL
# December 4, 2004 5:44 AM

Arno Nel on Information Portals, Sharepoint Portal said:

# December 6, 2004 1:19 AM

Dave said:

Regarding remoteable object model direction ... it's interesting to note that Microsoft uses web services to connect Word, Excel, etc. to WSS.
# December 6, 2004 10:01 PM

Adam Jeffries said:

Marvelous. Just what is needed
# December 7, 2004 10:50 AM

J. Adelt said:

Schick (German) Great Stuff (English)
# December 14, 2004 7:11 PM

John Brennan's Blog said:

# December 16, 2004 6:59 AM

Amanda.Murphy's Xbox & SharePoint Blog said:

Nigel Bridport has released a very exciting Windows App to help improve the management of users for Windows SharePoint Services sites. Nigel was also very quick to offer his help in getting the user group going - so nice to...
# January 11, 2005 8:13 PM

The Boiler Room said:

# February 9, 2005 1:13 PM

The Wilk's Blog said:

Updated my list of links: 3rd Party Webparts
# May 28, 2005 6:19 PM

SharePoint said:

Found these on a SharePoint blog.&amp;nbsp; There appears to be lots of useful web parts here as well as...
# August 17, 2005 11:08 AM

SharePoint said:

Found these on a SharePoint blog by Mark Kruger (WSS MVP @ http://www.sharepointblogs.com/mkruger).&amp;nbsp;...
# August 17, 2005 4:54 PM

The Boiler Room - Mark Kruger, SharePoint MVP said:

For those who aggregate my feed and do not often visit the blog iteself... I've updated my SharePoint...
# June 1, 2006 4:45 PM

The Boiler Room - Mark Kruger, Microsoft SharePoint MVP said:

Free SharePoint Web Parts (3rd Party) Konrad Brunner - UGS&#39;s Web Parts (broken link 8/25) Document

# June 27, 2007 9:42 AM
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