How to Configure User Profile Service and My Site in SharePoint 2013: Part I

In this article we learn how to configure a user profile and My Site configuration in SharePoint 2013. In earlier versions of SharePoint, each user had a profile and a personal site (e.g., My Site). The 2013 version of SharePoint splits My Site into three sections: Newsfeed, SkyDrive, and Sites. A global navigation bar provides access to each section. These social features are tightly integrated into SharePoint 2013, so you no longer need to launch a web browser to access them.

Use the following procedure to create a My Site Host site collection:

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure has the following credentials:
   
   
   • The user account that performs this procedure is a farm administrator
   • The user account that performs this procedure is a member of the Administrators group on the computer that is running SharePoint Server.
    
2. First we have to create a web application for My Site; see:
   
   
    
3. On Central Administration, in the Application Management section, click Create site collections.
    
4. On the Create Site Collection page, in the Web Application section, select the My Site web application.
    
5. In the Title and Description section, type the title and description for the site collection.
    
6. In the Web Site Address section, select the path of the URL for the My Site host. In most cases, you can use the root directory (/).
   
   In the Template Selection section, click the Enterprise tab, and then select My Site Host.
   
   
    
7. In the Primary Site Collection Administrator section, type the user name (in the form <DOMAIN>\<user name>) for the user who will be the site collection administrator.
    
8. In the Secondary Site Collection Administrator section, type the user name for the secondary administrator of the site collection.
    
9. If you are using quotas to manage storage for site collections, in the Quota Template section, click a template in the Select a quota template list.
10. Click OK.

Use the following procedure to create a User Profile Service application:

1. Verify that the user account that is performing this procedure has the following credentials:
   
   
   • The user account that performs this procedure is a farm administrator
   • The user account that performs this procedure is a member of the Administrators group on the computer that is running a SharePoint Server.
    
2. On Central Administration, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.
3. On the Manage Service Application page, on the ribbon, click New, and then click User Profile Service Application.
   
   
    
4. In the Name section, type the User Profile service application name.
   
   
    
5. In the Application Pool section, select the application pool that the User Profile service application will run in (if it exists), or create a new application pool.
6. Accept the default settings for the profile database, the synchronization database, and the social tagging database (unless you want different names), and specify failover servers if you are using them.
7. In the Profile Synchronization Instance section, select the synchronization server.
    
8. In the My Site Host URL section, enter the My Site Host site collection URL that you created in the previous step.
   
   
    
9. In the My Site Managed Path section, enter the part of the path that, when appended to the My Site host URL, will give the path of the user's My Sites. For example, if the My Site host URL is http://server:12345/ and you want each user's My Site to be at http://server:12345/personal/<user name> then enter /personal for the My Site managed path. The managed path that you enter is created automatically. There does not have to already be a managed path with the name that you provide.
   
   
    
10. In the Site Naming Format section, select a naming scheme.
11. In the Default Proxy Group section, select whether you want the proxy of this User Profile Service to be a part of the default proxy group on this farm.
12. Click Create.
13. When the Create New User Profile Service Application page displays the message Profile Service Application successfully created, click OK.

Remaining part can be seen in the second part of this article.