User Management Solutions and Suites for SharePoint Extranets (Part 3/3)

In this three part series by me, Joel Oleson, on extranet challenges and solutions with emphasis on user management, we walked through the nuts and bolts in the following...

1) SharePoint extranet authentication and licensing

2) SharePoint extranet freeware and user and site management self service point solutions

3) More Fully Featured SharePoint extranet and management suites

Off the Shelf SharePoint Management Solutions 

Looking at User/SharePoint Management there are even more products out there, all relevant to the arduous tasks of day to day operations.

Extranet Collaboration Manager for SharePoint 2007 from SharePoint Solutions (ExCM) - spend some time here browsing through the various tools that will help you better manage authentication, setup, user accounts, site provisioning, as well as some FREE SharePoint user login FBA samples (This example, Visual Studio Solution, illustrates how to take custom action upon SharePoint FBA user login.)

IdevFactory - Universal SharePoint Manager 2007 - user management, site management, item management, farm management to details features like site sizing reporting, account expiration deletion, permissions and security analysis, add user, clone security, etc... tons of management-type features around permissions, security, and user management.

Deliverpoint - (do I even have to mention the relationship with Mindsharp?) Our own Keith Richie (SharePoint MVP and ex-Microsoft Support Guru) and Todd Bleeker (SharePoint MVP Fastest Dev in the Midwest)... this is their brainchild.  "You can't manage what you can't see. And you can't easily see permissions in SharePoint. Until now. DeliverPoint: Permissions is the first security trimmed tool for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, that lets you discover, understand and effectively manage permissions at every administrative level across the farm."

Axceler ControlPoint - "You now have the ability to identify and manage the growth of sites, perform trend analysis on KPI's, as well as the ability to manage those sites within your own department. The result is you can restore order before your environment gets away from you. ControlPoint also lets you quickly identify problems and, even better, act upon them."

Vyapin Admin Report Kit for SharePoint 2007 (ARKSP) -  "powerful configuration and usage reporting tool for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. ARKSP presents information across web applications, site collection, sites and lists in SharePoint in simple report formats."

Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint - "provides tools to understand and manage your entire SharePoint environment giving IT the much needed visibility into all SharePoint servers, site collections and sites. Utilize the over 30 out-of-the-box reports."  Look at the policy features and custom reporting.  While you're there, be sure to check out their best of breed backup, recovery and migration stuff.

AvePoint DocAve SharePoint Administrator - "leveraging the uniquely distributed architecture of DocAve 5.0, SharePoint Administrator offers a centralized console for administrators to easily view, search, manage, report, and replicate settings, configurations, and securities throughout their deployment."  I've seen the demos and it shows very well.  If you're looking for consistency... Also one of the best if not the best backup for SharePoint comes from AvePoint.  They've also got some great migration tools.

Sitecore SharePoint Connector Module - publish SharePoint document and assets to public-facing websites and extranets easily. The Module makes it easy, with transparent bi-directional content access and extranet web security of all SharePoint/MOSS 2007 assets.

EPC Group Webpart Gallery: Site Provisioning Solution, SharePoint External Security Model - The SharePoint Site Provisioning Solution will enable your organization to properly govern, track, and create new SharePoint Sites within your organization. The SharePoint External Security Model Solution enables your organization’s SharePoint environment to be securely accessed externally by employees, customers, partners, vendors, or other desired audience.

Idera Point Admin Toolset - Performance and Availability, Site Management, Server Management, and Security... These 10 solutions fit together nicely to provide the most common SharePoint Operations tasks with ease.  This company has figured out SQL management and nailed it, and has made SharePoint the next target.  It's an impressive suite that should definitely be looked at. You'll see the SQL influence to the tools, which makes management even smoother.

Epok Edition for SharePoint - This user management and identity provision and compliance solution has solutions integrated right into the SharePoint platform for both IT and the end user in making extranets based on SharePoint secure and transparent to corporate IT.  Setting up relationships with other companies doesn't have to be overly complex.  Check out this Epok for SharePoint flash presentation with great screenshots and visualizations. (Added on 10/13. Thanks for the tip Kris Younger, CTO of Epok.)  Also check out the Epok blog with many great SharePoint extranet posts.

Bamboo SharePoint Administration Suite - So Bamboo has been busy.  Very busy.  They've got so many solutions this gold ends up buried.  So let me break this down for you.  They've pulled together various areas that have been problem areas for SharePoint Admins and Portal Admins and created this grouping called the SharePoint Admin Suite, and a subset called the IT Productivity pack (focused on User Management scenarios).  They also give you a perpetual option on the suite that as new product gets developed and added into this suite, you get them automatically.  The products they already have compare to the ones you see above at a hugely reduced price, and you can buy them by the component or get the whole suite.  I covered a number of these point solutions in more detail in the previous post on freeware and point solutions.  When used together you save money, have support and assurance, and have a more complete management story.

• Alert Plus (HW05)
• Alerts Administrator (HW39)
• Group Email (HW14)
• Group Redirect (HW12)
• List Print (HW50) (Just Released!)
• My Alerts Organizer (HW40)
• Password Change (HW06)
• Password Expiration (HW23)
• Password Reset (HW10)
• Site Creation Plus (HW28)
• System Log Manager (HW43)
• User Account Setup (HW07)
• User Directory (HW08)
• User Profile Plus (HW29)
• User Profile Sync (HW19)
• User Redirect (HW13)
• Coming soon (at no additional cost to Suite buyers): SharePoint Analytics Solution Accelerator, Site Management Solution Accelerator

Bamboo IT Productivity Pack - This is a subset of those above.  Essentially you get the user creation and self service password management interface (Web Parts)  More details above, but you get the idea.  Still cheaper in a bundle, plus the added value of assurance and support.

• User Account Setup: Automatically create a user account in Active Directory (or NT) and SharePoint at the same time. The user can enter Active Directory information as well as designate which SharePoint groups and permissions are assigned to the user account.
• Password Change: Users can change their own Active Directory (or NT) password from a SharePoint Web Page.
• Password Reset: Resets both Active Directory (or NT) passwords and issues a new temporary password via email to the user that adheres to your password security policy.

Bamboo User Management Solution Accelerator - SharePoint user accounts using a single administration console for adding, editing, removing and cloning user access security. Manage SharePoint groups and site access through one central interface point.

The Bamboo User Management Solution Accelerator provides administrators with a user-friendly, SharePoint-based application to maintain and organize user access security information across a SharePoint environment. Keep large quantities of user information from becoming unwieldy, streamline the management of user accounts and SharePoint group control, and secure data integrity. Create, modify or remove both users and groups from a single interface. Create users with multiple group access instead of having to do it one group at a time. Clone existing users, matching security access to new users in a single step. The tree-based navigation provides for flexible user viewing options through name, organization and site drill down. The SharePoint group display capability alleviates the tedious task of looking into each group to see if a particular user has membership.

Figure Below: User Account Management Solution Accelerator - Tree Control view of Site Groups and Membership

Figure Below: User Account Management Solution Accelerator - Note the User Management Features of Cloning Users, Permissions, Removing, Adding, etc...  all of these features plus delegation, (you can delegate administration... who gets to do user management) right in the UI.

The User Managment Solution Accelerator is powerful management right in the SharePoint UI. 

In combination with it I find the User Directory a very good fit.  The Bamboo User Directory (HW08) provides visibility, search, and empowers users to keep their attributes more accurate.  It provides the ability to "write back" to AD or SharePoint Profile, and provides a rich user interface where users can either maintain their own information or support can easily update the information.  You can view your user organization in a user-friendly tree view by organizational chart or alphabetical order by last name. Users can view all profiles but can only edit their own.  You may just want to make this Admin or internal-only accessible in your extranet, but it could be a very rich partner directory.

So there are a lot of off the shelf solutions from various vendors to reduce the need to have to develop anything, especially around user management, password reset interfaces, and site provisioning.

I hope you enjoyed this list, please comment or feel free to link to this content if you found it valuable.

Joel Oleson (AKA SharePoint Joel)