Recently i faced an issue in a SharePoint site while i was trying to add a FBA user in a site group. On searching the user in people picker, it was not showing the FBA user(s) to select. Every time i searched the FBA user(s) through people picker, it returned me only user(s) from AD. I searched Google but no clear instructions on how to resolve this issue. Finally after some R&D, i was able to resolve this. So i thought to pen it down step by step for you guys. Here are the steps.
First we need to know the values of ‘Membership Provider’ and ‘Role Manager’ of web application.
1. Navigate to Central Administration > Application Management > Manage web applications (Under Web Applications section)
Or
Directly navigate to http://<CA URL>/_admin/WebApplicationList.aspx
2. Select web application (That’s need to be configure for FBA users search.).
3. Click on Authentication Providers from ribbon.
4. Inside Authentication Providers pop up, Click on ‘Default’ hyperlink under zone column.
5. On Edit Authentication Modal popup page, go to Claims Authentication Types.
6. Note down the value of ‘ASP.NET Membership provider name’ and ‘ASP.NET Role manager name’.
7. Exit from the CA.
Make entries in web.config of application.
1. Open web.config file inside ‘C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\<Application Folder>’ folder.
2. Search for ‘<PeoplePickerWildcards>’
3. Now add values of ‘Membership Provider’ and ‘Role Manager’ in this section as shown below.
<PeoplePickerWildcards>
<clear />
<add key=”<Your Membership Provider Value Goes Here>” value=”%” />
<add key=”<Your Role Manager Value Goes Here>” value=”%” />
</PeoplePickerWildcards>
4. Save and close the web.config.
5. Now find FBA user through people picker and it will work.
Happy Share Pointing 🙂