Best Practices For Displaying User Profile Information In Sharepoint
Showcasing Key Profile Data
A well-designed display of user profile data should showcase the most important attributes of a user’s identity and role within an organization. The key fields to highlight include the user’s full name, job title, and departmental affiliation.
Highlighting Name, Title, and Department
The user’s full name should be displayed prominently as the main identifying characteristic, rendered in a large font size and eye-catching style. Any professional or academic titles the user holds, such as Dr., Prof., etc. should be included. The user’s job title and department provide helpful context around their position and function within the organization.
For example:
Dr. Jane Smith
Senior Researcher, Health Sciences Department
Displaying Profile Photo
A profile photo helps put a face to the user’s name and makes their profile more engaging and humanized. Display the user’s photo in a reasonably sized frame next to identifying fields like their name and title. Preferably use images that convey professionalism and that align to corporate guidelines around dress code, background, etc. Include a default generic avatar if no user photo is provided.
Linking to “About Me” Page
Provide a link to a dedicated “About Me” page where the user can share more detailed information on their background, areas of expertise, current projects, and contact details. This helps avoid cluttering the main profile display while enabling the discovery of richer information for those interested. The “About Me” page also lets users customize how they present themselves.
Customizing the User Profile Web Part
SharePoint provides a built-in web part for surfacing user profile information in pages and portals. This web part is highly configurable through web part properties that modify which data fields are shown, their layout, and visual styling.
Modifying Web Part Properties
In the web part tool pane, edit properties like:
– Field selections – Choose which profile fields to display
– Layout – Configure field order, stacking, orientation
– Appearance – Set formatting for field labels, text, borders, etc.
Tune these settings to align with corporate branding needs and highlight organizational priorities around user profiles. Properties can also improve accessibility through high contrast modes.
Selecting Fields to Display
Carefully choose which profile fields to display in the web part by tapping into the hundreds of possible attributes maintained on the user entity in SharePoint and Active Directory. Prioritize key details over unnecessary data that clutters the interface. Consider positioning less commonly referenced properties under expandable sections.
Configuring Layout and Styling
Take advantage of layout configurations in the web part settings to size images appropriately, align fields in columns or rows for better scanning, and strengthen visual hierarchy. Set the styling colors, spacing, borders, and font properties to ensure consistency with the surrounding portal theme and branding.
Enhancing Profiles with JavaScript
For more advanced customizations beyond what the out-of-the-box web part permits, developers can leverage the SharePoint JavaScript object model and REST APIs to dynamically display and update profiles.
Retrieving User Data with REST API
Use REST calls to pull profile data into client-side solutions for greater flexibility in manipulating that data vs. relying solely on server-side rendering. Retrieve profiles in bulk to avoid the overhead of individual requests.
Dynamically Updating Profiles
With SharePoint’s extensive JavaScript libraries, user profile displays can feel more responsive and modern by adding transitions, animations, live previews, and inline editing powered by asynchronous data retrieval methods.
Adding Interactivity
Build more engaging profiles using client technologies for interactivity like hover events, modal dialogs, favorite or follow actions, mentions, shares, etc.
Optimizing Performance
The volume of user profiles in an enterprise SharePoint environment can significantly impact page load times and throughput. Various optimization techniques are required to scale profile displays.
Caching Profile Data
Avoid repeated calls to load the same profile data by caching that information for the duration of a user’s session or until the data is invalidated by an update. Client and server caching speeds response times.
Lazy Loading Images
Since profile photos can amount to large page weight as their count grows, employ lazy load techniques to defer images below the page fold until needed and prevent resource bottlenecking.
Scaling to Large Directories
Techniques like pagination, infinite scroll, indexed search, clustered architecture, and integration with dedicated directories can improve performance with tens of thousands of user profiles.
Securing Profile Information
Balance open access to profiles for transparency and discoverability against privacy and permissions concerns by tuning these security features.
Setting Appropriate Permissions
Determine the right roles like site owners, administrators, managers, and standard users who can view the entirety or subsets of user profile data based on organizational guidelines.
Anonymizing Sensitive Fields
For properties containing personally identifiable information, display anonymous versions like partial birthdates instead of full ones unless the viewer has elevated permissions.
Restricting Access with Groups
Assign users to Active Directory or SharePoint security groups that govern visibility into certain profile elements like contacts, manager chain, salary, etc.
Troubleshooting Profile Display Issues
In scenarios where user profile data is not rendering properly in SharePoint, investigators should rule out these common culprits.
Identifying Missing Profiles
Diagnose failed user syncs between SharePoint and identity stores like Active Directory which can prevent profiles from appearing. Compare expected users against available profiles.
Checking for Sync Errors
Inspect synchronization logs for workflow failures, data mismatches, truncation issues, or duplicate profile errors that impair profile availability and accuracy.
Resetting the User Profile Service
As a last resort when widespread profile display problems occur and other fixes don’t apply, restart the User Profile Service to clear any stuck threads, recalculate caches, and resync identity data.
