Sharepoint services using external connector 1

[Hirsty2000]

Good afternoon all. Just turned this group up after a trawl through the internet and am hoping you can help.

We are in the process of rolling out sharepoint services but would like to use it internally and externally with authentication.

When installed we selected AD mode and are happy setting up internal users using AD info - this is easy, however the issue comes when wanting to validate external clients to use our site. Because of the number of external client we have decided on using the EC however cannot find any details on how to install and how to add users on once installed.

Can anyone help with advice or links - screenshots would also be great if possible?

Thanks in advance!


Thanks

Hirsty

 

[Thomas2000]

Hello,

Depending on how your AD (and network) is setup there are a few different ways to approach this.

The External Connector License is actually just a form of CAL (client access license) so it does not have anything to do with authenticating users.

How have you setup the sharepoint machine(s)? Will external access be going through a proxy server? Allowing external users access to an internal network / Active Directory can cause security issues. You can ofcourse use local user accounts on the webserver hosting the WSS for external users.

We are running our extranet through a proxy server that is placed on a DMZ zone (accessible from Internet) and then the actual WSS webserver on an internal (trusted) network.
We have one internal AD and one external AD. Both proxyserver and WSS server are members of the external AD.

There is a forest trust betweeen the internal and external AD which allows our internal users to use their AD accounts and external users will have an account in the external AD.

Microsoft has some articles about using Microsoft ISA in an extranet scenario for WSS.

You can find them at:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/isa/2004/plan/isawss.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sppt/wss/revproxy.mspx

Previously we run our extranet enviroment as a totally standalone installation placed on a DMZ and accessible from the Internet, but we had no connections to AD or any other internal machines due to security reasons.

Cheers,
Thomas