Wildcard Search for Forms Based Authentication Users in the SharePoint 2010 People Picker Not Working

December 30, 2010 2 Comments

wildcard

The Problem

Ran into an issue today with a client. We have their site configured for mixed authentication in SharePoint 2010 – using both Windows Authentication for internal users, and Forms Based Authentication (FBA) users, using the default SQL Membership Provider. The problem was that we could wildcard search Active Directory users, but, not FBA users. Interesting. If we typed in their username exactly, it came up just fine. Otherwise, well… nothing.

I had no idea what the issue could have been, so… I did a little digging around, and was able to come up with the solution!

 

The Resolution

The fix, is quite easy! Thanks to this post I came across: http://mikevallotton.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/sharepoint-2010-claims-authentication-custom-login-form-part-1-modifying-your-config-files/, I had a “duh!” moment. When setting up the FBA provider originally, I seemed to have skipped a step – adding the Membership and Role providers into the PeoplePickerWildcards section of the web.config.

<configuration>
    …
    <SharePoint>
        …
        <PeoplePickerWildcards>
          <clear />
          <add key="SQL-RoleManager" value="%" />
          <add key="SQL-MembershipProvider" value="%" />
        </PeoplePickerWildcards>
        …
    </SharePoint>
    …
</configuration>

That did the trick, now both my roles and users can be searched via wildcard in the People Picker in SharePoint 2010. Hopefully this helps others out!

Filed under SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

About Geoff Varosky
Geoff Varosky is a Senior Architect for Insight, based out of Watertown, MA. He has been architecting and developing web based applications his entire career, and has been working with SharePoint for the past 15 years. Geoff is an active member of the SharePoint community, Co-Founder and Co-Organizer of the Boston Area SharePoint Users Group, co-founder for the Boston Office 365 Users Group, co-organizer for SharePoint Saturday Boston and speaks regularly at SharePoint events and user groups.

2 Responses to Wildcard Search for Forms Based Authentication Users in the SharePoint 2010 People Picker Not Working

  1. Sean Gerlinger says:
    August 30, 2012 at 5:21 PM

    Do you know a way to be able to make this work for a SQL membership provided for Roles, I found that you can not search for a role using a SQL membership provider?

    Reply
    • Geoff Varosky says:
      November 20, 2012 at 10:55 AM

      Unfortunately not. I do not know offhand where the limitation is for the role search, but it cannot be done, unless a custom provider is written to do so. the ASP.NET membership provider does not support this.

      Reply

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