User Profile Synchronization Using SharePoint 2013

Good Day to everyone, here we will see the user profile synchronization in SharePoint 2013.

Before we begins let's be sure we know why are we using user profile synchronization.

The main purpose of user profile synchronization in SharePoint is to share thoughts, news feeds, social tags and to store personal data.

Before beginning synchronization, create two domain users using active directory:

1. For user profile administrator.
2. For replicate active directory changes.

Step 1

Create a delegate control to reflect the directory changes to the SharePoint, so right-click the domain and choose Delegate control.



Step 2

Click "Next >" to proceed.



Step 3

Add a domain user of which the credentials we are going to manage the directory changes with, here I added a domain user and named it replicate_admin.



Step 4

Enable the radio button to create a custom task to delegate then click "Next >".



Step 5

Enable this folder, existing object in this folder and create the new objects in this folder then click "Next >".



Step 6

Here select a check box to replicate the directory changes and do the replication synchronization and click "Next >".



Then finally click "Finish".



Next, I will create and configure the user profile synchronization so before that I need to check whether the service has been started, by default the user profile synchronization service would be stopped.

To check the service status, go to the Management Shell and type Get-SPServiceInstance then hit Enter (Or).

Go to Central Administration and select System settings -> Manage services on server. Here you can see the following screen that the user profile service is in stopped mode.



Note: Do not click Start until you are finished with the following procedure.

Here the procedure to be followed to start the user profile synchronization is to go to "Run..." and type "services.msc" then click OK.



Once the services pages are opened search for "Forefront identity services" and "Forefront identity synchronization", by defaults they are disabled.



So right-click Forefront Identity then go to Properties then choose log on and provide the credentials like Domain\administrator then change the status to "Automatic with delayed start" then click OK.

Use the preceding method for Forefront Identity synchronization and click OK.

Note: You should not give a start manually.

Then go to Central Administration and select  "System settings" -> "Manage services on server" then locate user profile synchronization click start services then it prompts with the following screen:



Here provide the administrator credentials then click OK. Then the user profile synchronization services will be started.

To check the job status for running user profile synchronization go to Central Administration then select "Monitoring" then check the job status. There you can see the following screen, check with the running jobs.



Once the running status finishes check with services.msc. Both services will be started automatically.



Now check with the SharePoint services, whether the user profile services has started. Go to Central Administration then select "System Settings" -> "Mange services on server" and check that the following highlighted services have started.



If it doesn't start the service then just restart the machine and follow the procedure again, if it starts then proceed with the following procedure.

Now we configure the syncronization connection using the following marked option and we create a connection to synchronize the user details from the active directory.



Here we can create the new connection.



Below you can see how to connect the configuration for importing the user details from the active directory. Here we provide a connection name and select active directory in type and provide your forest name and provide the administrator account credentials.



Then click populate container. It will generate your Forest OUs and user details, here you can select all the options or you can select users and organizational units alone. Then click OK.



Here configure the connection to active directory so now we will start the synchronization by clicking the following option.



After clickiing Start synchronization it will ask to crawl or synchronization type either full or incremental, click full synchronization and click OK.



Once clicking OK on the right side you can see the synchronization status, before synchronization the user profile count will be 1 and once it starts the synchronization status will show synchronizing.



Once the synchronization finishes you can see the number of user profiles will be increased like how many users are there in the active directory and you can see the status is idle.

Now user profile synchronization has been configured and synchronized successfully, now create an Enterprise search page and connect the end user with their colleagues.