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Recently Microsoft has released the Fourth Release of the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit. It was announced on the SharePoint team blog.
A very interesting part of this toolkit is a permission reporting tool. I think that every administrator should have it on their MOSS/WSS environment as this helps with permission management on the farm. It is also really useful when working with work-flows and other permission setting solutions - it can help you debug some problems with the permissions to the work-flow and work-flow items.
Generally, the tool allows administrators to quickly check users' permissions. This is very helpful, especially when you have multiple inheritance brakes and large number of permission levels - it is very easy to lose track of who has which permissions.
The tool allows you to check permissions on every level (site, list and item) to determine what permissions the chosen user has. The tool displays what kind of permission levels the given user has to a chosen object and how they were assigned (i.e., through group or directly). More about this functionality is here.
The reporting tool, also, gives you the ability to quickly glance through permissions for all lists and sites in a given site. It also lets you compare the permissions to the parent permissions and lists which are different - who was added and who was removed as well as different permissions for given users on both locations. More on Office.com.
What is strange - the tool does not tell you that a user is a farm admin.
Another cool thing is the broken inheritance report. This report gives you information about what the permissions are for the current object and its siblings. More info about these report is here. The reports are in XML form, but can be easily opened in Excel. By default reports are stored in a SharePoint list.
Note: It takes some time to run the report.
You can download the tool from here.
Here are some tips about the setup:
A very interesting part of this toolkit is a permission reporting tool. I think that every administrator should have it on their MOSS/WSS environment as this helps with permission management on the farm. It is also really useful when working with work-flows and other permission setting solutions - it can help you debug some problems with the permissions to the work-flow and work-flow items.
Generally, the tool allows administrators to quickly check users' permissions. This is very helpful, especially when you have multiple inheritance brakes and large number of permission levels - it is very easy to lose track of who has which permissions.
The tool allows you to check permissions on every level (site, list and item) to determine what permissions the chosen user has. The tool displays what kind of permission levels the given user has to a chosen object and how they were assigned (i.e., through group or directly). More about this functionality is here.
The reporting tool, also, gives you the ability to quickly glance through permissions for all lists and sites in a given site. It also lets you compare the permissions to the parent permissions and lists which are different - who was added and who was removed as well as different permissions for given users on both locations. More on Office.com.
What is strange - the tool does not tell you that a user is a farm admin.
Another cool thing is the broken inheritance report. This report gives you information about what the permissions are for the current object and its siblings. More info about these report is here. The reports are in XML form, but can be easily opened in Excel. By default reports are stored in a SharePoint list.
Note: It takes some time to run the report.
You can download the tool from here.
Here are some tips about the setup:
you need to have SP2 with the April Cumulative Updates. I would recommend installing the October Updates, as the April ones are included in the October CU. All details on how to setup the October CU are here. Make sure you install the SP with all the language packs, as without them you will not be able to install the CU.
after you setup the Toolkit you will find the reporting tool in the folder where the toolkit was setup (by default C:\Program Files\Microsoft\SPAdministrationToolkit\PermissionReportingSolution). It's in the form of a WSP. You need to use the STADM and addsolution operation and to set it up on your farm. Here is an MSDN article on how to add solution, deploy it and activate the feature from the STSADM
Next you need to deploy the solution from the central administration (operations -> global configuration -> solution management).
Next you need to deploy the solution from the central administration (operations -> global configuration -> solution management).
The last step is the feature activation - you activate it for the farm. You need the April CU to activate the feature.
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