Audience Domain Theory clarification?

Question

We are facing an issue with Audience and the senario follows.

1. We have two Domains namely Domain_One and Domain_Two in the same forest.
2. Both are Trusting each other.
3. Both the domain has its own set of users (Direct OU structue & Not a nested OU structure).
4. The Domain Local Security Group "Dev-X" is in Domain_One.
5. Few users from both the domains are member of "Dev-X", say 50users (30domainone users + 20domaintwousers).
6. SharePoint Applications are hosted in Domain_one.
7. SSP is hosted in Domain_one.
8. We have an audience in SSP & it is controlled by the rule "Memberof -> 'Dev-X'"
9. Audience pulls only Domain_one user details (30domainone users) and it ignores
10. Domain_two users (20domaintwousers) though they are member of 'Dev-X' group.

What could be the issue & fix, how does SharePoint pulls the user details & how it examines the audience rule?

Answer 1

I didn't answer when this was first posted because I wasn't sure of the specific details, but my understanding is that When members of Domain_Two belong to a group in Domain_One the reference or link is not the same as it is for the local users so it doesn't make the match.

I had the same issue a few years ago when I had multiple domains and Security groups that contained cross-domain accounts.

Answer 2

This is critical to understanding how SharePoint collects information, from AD, about group membership. SharePoint does NOT import the membership of groups by directly querying those groups. Rather, SharePoint determines what groups a user belongs to by reading the user’s memberOf property. But the memberOf property will not show a user’s membership in local or global groups in another domain, so audiences based on those groups will be missing that user.

Answer 3

Below are the possible solutions that I can think of:

A. Control the audience through SharePoint Security group

1. Create a SharePoint Security group
2. Add the users into the security group
3. Create an audience using the SharePoint Security group

B. Control the audience through SharePoint Security group along with AD group

1. Create an AD group with global scope in each domain
2. Add the users into the AD groups
3. Create an Audience & use those AD groups to control the audience

C. Control the audience through AD group

1. Create an AD group with global scope in each domain
2. Create an AD group with Local Domain scope in Main domain
3. Add the other domain groups into the Local Domain group
4. Create an audience & control through that Local Domain group

Please let me the best solution that you would suggest.