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I have to manage the concept of external contacts in a SP farm. My idea is to create a custom User Profil with a specific sub-type for such contacts.

There is not yet a storage for this external contacts, and I have to allow functional users to manage this list (2000 items estimated).

To make it easy to manage, I'd like to create a List in a SharePoint site to describe and manage my external contacts. Is it possible to use the user synchronization profile to sync the SP list with the profils ? Can I use a BCS to the SP services to reach my goal?

Any other suggestion ?

thx

[Edit] some clarifications :

  • today, external contacts are managed in an excel file by one person
  • the main goal is to allow a group of users to manage these contacts --> source of my idea to create a SP site with a contact list. EAsy to manage security
  • the contact "schema" is very minimalist : name, company, function, etc. and fits quite well in a SP contact list + few customization like "skills"
  • the SP profiles are used (in my mind) to integrate these contacts in the concept of global directory that will contains both internal users and external contacts, especially the possibility of use the people search to find a skilled person.
Steve B
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1 Answers1

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Thanks for the clarification!

The first bullets are fine, great usage of SharePoint! List items are however list items and SP profiles are SP profiles. Id say the most efficient way to do this is to build a custom web part that fetches the SP Profiles and puts them in your contact list. That way you wont have to fetch the data from different libraries when querying for results. You could as well create a timed service that run a few times a day ensuring your lists are up to date.

If you are to have some sort of integration with external systems and lists I'd recommend having a look at the Camelot .NET Connector for SharePoint. Here is a simple example of how to put data in a similar contact list as you are describing, http://blog.bendsoft.com/2011/02/creating-a-simple-contact-us-form/.

Eric Herlitz
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  • I'm not sure to understand your answer. I said that the contact reference repository is a SP list, and contacts are pushed to the profiles. You are, in opposition, telling me it may be better to use the profiles as the reference repository, and use custom webparts/pages to manage these profiles ? Am I right ? – Steve B May 22 '11 at 10:35