SharePoint's handling of user profile information can be a complicated subject to understand and may not always work exactly like you expect it to. Depending on your specific SharePoint configuration, SharePoint will store user profile information (account, name, email address, phone number, etc.) in multiple places and will make attempts to synchronize some, but not all, of them.
The storage locations for user profile information and the sync mechanisms that are used, depends on multiple factors, such as:
The remainder of this article attempts to explain the subject as clearly as possible by examining the impact of each of these variables on user profile information, with a particular emphasis on external users that are managed with ExCM.
There are major differences in how user profile information is captured, stored and synchronized in SharePoint Foundation vs. SharePoint Server.
SharePoint Foundation automatically creates a hidden list in the root of every site collection you create. It is named the "User Information List". This list is a standard SharePoint List, but it is hidden from view and is completely managed by SharePoint.
Even though it is a hidden list, if you are an Administrator you can still find it and examine some of its contents:
A given SharePoint web application can be configured to authenticate users from multiple authentication providers. The most common authentication providers that are used with SharePoint are:
This screenshot shows and example of all three of these authentication providers being enabled and configured on a SharePoint web application:
Furthermore, the details concerning how user profile information is handled is different for each authentication provider. So, the way user profile information is stored, displayed and edited is different for an AD user vs. an FBA user vs. an ADFS user.
This fact, combined with the Foundation vs. Server differences described in the previous section, can make it very difficult to understand how user profile information is handled in a given situation.
When using ExCM with SharePoint, all external users are authenticated using FBA and the ASP.NET Membership Provider. The accounts for these users are stored in the ASP.NET Membership Provider SQL database that is created during the process of setting up and enabling Forms-based Authentication for a SharePoint web application.
By default, the database is named "ExtranetDirectory", but can be given whatever name you prefer. You can use SQL Server Management Studio to find this database. In the screenshot below it has been named "ED1ADFS" for a certain testing scenario, but regardless of the name chosen, the schema of the database is always the same:
You can think of this database as similar to Active Directory's database. It is a place to store user accounts, their passwords and other information, such as some user profile type data.
Just like with Active Directory, the ASP.NET SQL Membership Provider database lives "outside" of SharePoint. In other words, SharePoint does not have any native features to add/change/delete accounts in the database. But, SharePoint can use the database to authenticate users who try to login to the SharePoint web application.
One of ExCM's primary functions is to add new features in SharePoint that allow you to add/change/delete FBA user accounts in this database.
Also, ExCM provides some features to maintain some user profile information that the ASP.NET SQL Membership Provider supports. The table in the database where this type of user profile information is maintained is named "dbo.aspnet_Profile":
It is important to remember that the ASP.NET SQL Membership Provider Database is NOT a SharePoint database - just like Active Directory is not a SharePoint database. So, for the profile information that is stored in dbo.aspnet_Profile to be reflected inside SharePoint, features must be added to SharePoint to cause this to happen since SharePoint's user profile information is stored in the User Information List (and the User Profile Service Database when SharePoint Server is being used).
Microsoft provides SharePoint features to synchronize Active Directory profile attributes to SharePoint's User Information List (and the User Profile Service Database when SharePoint Server is being used). These are timer jobs that run on a schedule in your SharePoint farm.
Microsoft DOES NOT provide ANY SharePoint features to synchronize the ASP.NET Membership Provider SQL dbo.aspnet_Profile data with SharePoint's User Information List or User Profile Service Database.
So, in a SharePoint web application where you have configured both Active Directory and FBA as authentication providers, without ExCM installed you will find that SharePoint's user profile information that is maintained will be different for an AD user vs. an FBA user. In general, NO user profile information will be maintained for an FBA user when ExCM is not installed. In this scenario (when ExCM is not installed), adding an FBA user will result in no profile information being added to SharePoint for that user, as shown in the screenshots below:
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