Your IT Guy is Not Your Mom - Announcing the SharePoint User Registration Accelerator

When I was a little kid, and I got hungry, I would immediately alert my mom. In most cases, she would make me something to eat. In some cases (like when my mouth was full of cookies), she would not. This worked out okay for a while, until I got older, and like many teenage males with metabolisms similar to velociraptors, I started being hungry basically all of the time. If my mom had been required to make me a sandwich every time I was hungry, she may as well have put on a visor and a little headset, and just stood in the kitchen all day. 

Naturally, something had to give, and eventually it did. One day, my mom stopped responding to my requests for food by making sandwiches, and instead starting saying things like "there's roast beef in the fridge". Although I initially resisted this change -- often rummaging through the kitchen saying things like "where do we keep the sandwiches" -- it eventually made life easier for everyone. I got what I needed quickly, and my mom didn't have to do work that in reality had very little to do with her. 

This domestic dilemma is not unlike the one IT managers face every day, as hundreds or even thousands of new SharePoint user account requests flood their desks in various forms (email, phone, carrier pigeon, etc.) and slowly drive them insane. Fortunately, the same kind of solution works, too. If site visitors want their own accounts, why not let them do it themselves?

"I'LL TELL YOU WHY!!!!", says the IT manager, gruffly, only briefly looking up from his ten monitors, eight of which he's using to play some kind of online role playing game involving elves.

"BECAUSE THEY'D @!#$%?& BREAK EVERYTHING!!!!"

Valid point, IT guy. It's also exactly what we were thinking about when we designed the brand new Bamboo SharePoint User Registration Accelerator, now available for trial download or purchase from the Bamboo online storefront. 

With the User Registration Accelerator, users can quickly submit login and profile information from an easy to add, visually customizable Web Part that looks something like this.

But don't panic. Here's the good part -- at this point, the Accelerator runs the submitted email address through two different Lists; the first one to make sure there isn't already an existing account request associated with that address, and the second one to see how to categorize it. That's right -- the administrator has access to a Configuration List, where he or she can create different rules for different email addresses, or parts of email addresses. That way, everyone from "yourcompany.com" can be placed in a different set of AD or Security Groups than people from "theircompany.com", or "freeemailaccount.com", or wherever. The list supports wildcards, too, so you can use any part of an email address as a trigger for a rule. 

Why is this so important? Because now, your users can do the heavy lifting themselves, without being able to "break everything". Remember, an email address can only be used once (unless they administrator resets it), and that email has to be confirmed (an automatic validation email is sent out after the account is requested). Combine that with an unlimited set of custom rules, and you've got automated, controlled, auditable user registration, all handled by SharePoint and Active Directory. No bottleneck, no hand-holding, no nothing. 

If your portal has a growing user base, you owe it to yourself and your overworked IT department to check out the SharePoint User Registration Accelerator. As always, there's a free 15-day trial available for you to download and experiment with.

So tell your kids to make their own sandwiches -- you've got better things to do.