People picker very slow with active directory

Question

Using a standard people picker on a task form - searching the AD (active directory) is very slow.

Example:

• John Smith ([email protected])

When I enter smith in the people picker and hit CTRL+K or the little checkmark, the user is resolved right away as "John Smith".

Now when I use the addressbook feature and search for "smith", it takes about a minute for it to find "John Smith".

The AD contains about 2000 users so size is not the issue. How can I analyze this issue and speed up the search?

Answer 1

It might be that you are blocking an AD port in your firewall see this http://www.wildwires.com/blog/10-10-27/Slow_People_Picker.aspx

Answer 2

Microsoft AD is simply very slow to query. There is no way to speed it up. Eventually people will wonder why the performance is so ridiculously bad, and something will replace AD but you're stuck with it for the next long while. I suggest a background job that copies the query into a database or flat file, and have your program read that.