Configure People Search in SharePoint 2010 using https

I have made this configuration a lot of times, but last week I had problem that I could  solved thanks to this blog.

To configure People Search in SP2010, we all know that once you have your one Enterprise Search Site set up, you need to configure the scope and add the MySite url address to the crawling configuration. So go to CA –> General Application Settings –> Farm Search Administration –> Search Service Administration –> Content Sources and select your content source (normally Local Sharepoint sites). Here you need to add the MySite web application to the Start Addresses, but using the sps3 protocol, not the http.

I did realize that my User Profile application was running under HTTPS, but I thought that the sps3 protocol should work anyway. Well, that is NOT correct. If your User Profile web application uses HTTPS protocol, you need to add the sps3s to the Start Addresses configuration.

After that, check that the crawling account has access to the User Profile store checking the option in the Administrators configuration of the User Profile Service.

The People Search should work now.

Custom MySites TopLinkBar placed in a not-MySites site

It is hard to describe in only one line what I have been doing last week. Sorry about that, but I guess the problem is quite common between customers that want to integrate several different kind of SharePoint 2010 templates with the nice look & feel that MySites offers.

In short, I was asked to keep the same TopLinkBar from MySites in an intranet Team site and in a Basic Search Center site. They 3 were running obviously in 3 different web applications, and they should use the same links.

My first idea: add the control

<SharePoint:DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="GlobalNavigation"/>

to the v4.master (for the TeamSite) and the minimal.master (for the SearchCenter) pages. Then just modify through the SiteSettings the Top Link Bar links in each of the Site Collections. The problem is that this kind of configuration is specifically for MySite based templates, and this will not work in any other type of templates. So although you can see now the TopLinkBar in your site, it is in fact a useless dummy bar that contains links to nowhere…

My second idea: create an own TopLinkBar, using a copy of the User Control TopNavBar.ascx located in CONTROLTEMPLATES which is the control rendered when you place the

<SharePoint:DelegateControl runat="server" ControlId="GlobalNavigation"/>

in the master pages. We can set this new control to our solution in a Module, adding this to the elements.xml

<Control Id="GlobalNavigation" Sequence="10" ControlSrc="~/_CONTROLTEMPLATES/CustomTemplates/CustomTopNavigation.ascx" />

Then, inherit from the class MySiteDataSource, which is being used to set the links in the navigation bar, and modify programmatically the navigation to set my own links. Here again there is a problem, which is the sentence in the MSDN article: This class and its members are reserved for internal use and are not intended to be used in your code. So no, I could not access these methods…

My third and final idea: it is pretty much the second one (create an own CustomTopNavigation.ascx control, add it to the master pages, blablabla) BUT, create my own SiteMapDataSource in my CustomTopNavigation control that I will set to the TopNavigationMenu itself in the DataSourceID parameter.

<SharePoint:AspMenu
     ID="MySiteTopNavigationMenu"
     Runat="server"
     EnableViewState="false"
     DataSourceID="MySiteTopNavDS"
     AccessKey="<%$Resources:wss,navigation_accesskey%>"
     UseSimpleRendering="true"
     UseSeparateCss="false"
     Orientation="Horizontal"
     StaticDisplayLevels="1"
     MaximumDynamicDisplayLevels="1"
     PopOutImageUrl=""
     SkipLinkText=""
     CssClass="s4-mysitetn">
  </SharePoint:AspMenu>
  <asp:SiteMapDataSource runat="server" id="MySiteTopNavDS"  SiteMapProvider="MySiteMapProvider" ShowStartingNode="false" />

Then, create somewhere in the code a custom SiteMap provider and set my links.

public class CustomNavigation : PortalSiteMapProvider
    {
        public override SiteMapNodeCollection GetChildNodes(System.Web.SiteMapNode node)
        {
            PortalSiteMapNode pNode = node as PortalSiteMapNode;
            if (pNode != null)
            {
                if (pNode.Type == NodeTypes.Area)
                {
                    SiteMapNodeCollection nodeColl = base.GetChildNodes(pNode);
                            SiteMapNode childNode = new SiteMapNode(…, "My Newsfeed");
                            SiteMapNode childNode1 = new SiteMapNode(..., "My Content");
                            SiteMapNode childNode2 = new SiteMapNode(…, "My Profile");
                            SiteMapNode childNode3 = new SiteMapNode(…, "New Link");
                            nodeColl.Add(childNode);
                            nodeColl.Add(childNode1);
                            nodeColl.Add(childNode2);
                            nodeColl.Add(childNode3);
                    return nodeColl;
                }
                else
                    return base.GetChildNodes(pNode);
            }
            else
                return new SiteMapNodeCollection();
        }
    }

And then, finally, modify in the web.config files of the web applications we want to change (not for MySites web application, obviously) the entry for the SiteMap provider. That means, replace

<add name="MySiteMapProvider" description="MySite provider that returns areas and based on the current user context" type="Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal.MySiteMapProvider, Microsoft.SharePoint.Portal, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />

with

<add name="MySiteMapProvider" type="[namespace].CustomNavigation, […]" NavigationType="Global" /> 

I know it is not the cleanest way to modify this TopLinkBar, so if anyone has made it with another (and easier) method, I would really apprecciate this info .

Cheers!