My Sites is a feature that was introduced in SharePoint 2007, this feature has also been carried in to SharePoint 2010. My Sites is SharePoint’s answer to social networking, the ‘Facebook’ for SharePoint. They proved a user with their own personal profile which can be viewed by other users on the SharePoint network. this profile can store public and private documents and information, users can friend other users and view status updates from them. It will even show what documents the user has ‘liked’ on the portal.
My Sites could be a useful feature for the university, but we might not want everyone to use it, like students as they have no need for it. So today I set out to see if we could choose who gets a My Site and who doesn’t. Turns out it’s pretty easy.
From Central Administration you go to ‘Manage service applications’ then in the ribbon bar click ‘Manage’ then ‘User Profile Service Application’, finally in the ‘People’ menu, click ‘Manage User Permissions’. A window will then pop up where you will be able to select groups and un-check the ‘Create Personal Site’ box. Once you have done this, this user will no longer be able to use My Sites.
To get to the same option in SharePoint Online, simply go to the administration area, click ‘Manage SharePoint’, ‘Manage User Profiles’ and then ‘Manage User Permissions’. Simple.
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