SharePoint 2013 Mysites Setup /Configuration - Step by Step

This article describes step-by-step process of setting up the my site infrastructure in the SharePoint Farm.

Reference: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee624362.aspx

Lets Start...

Setting up the Host

The first step us to go create (according to the best practices) own web application for hosting my sites. Go to the central administration, Application management, “Manage web applications”

And create a dedicated web application (You can do it on existing web App too)

Create a site collection in the root of the newly created web application.

Site Collection must have “2013” experience and use “My Site Host” template.

After Site Collection has been created, click on the “Managed Paths”  in the web application that you created to host My Sites.

Add a new managed path with wildcard inclusion. I prefer to use “my” as the My Site managed path, but you can of course pick up anything else.

The next thing is to check service connections for the Web Application which will host my sites. Click on the “Service Connections” button to…

..see if right service applications are set up. 

Now it’s time to set up the self service site creation. Go back to the Web application management, chose the application that you created to host My Sites, and click on the “Self Service Site Creation” button. 

Click “On” in the “Site Collections” radio box, and enter your managed path in the “Start a Site” field (with “Prompt users to create a team site under” chosen)

Next step is to grant users permission to create new site collections (for my sites). Click on the “Permission Policy” button in the Web Application management, with the web application which hosts the my sites selected.

In the”Manage Permission Policy Levels”, click on the “Add Permission Policy Level”

Call it however you want (“MySite Subsite Creation” in my case), and grant the “Create Subsites” permission.

Now, the new permission policy level should appear among other policy levels…

And we need to grant that policy level to the users. Click on the “Users Policy” button in the Web Application management, with the web application that you created to host My Sites selected…

Click on the “Add users” link…

From all zones…

And select the users which you want to have rights to create my sites. On my case, it will be “Everyone”.

Select your newly created policy level…

And now you should see “Everyone” with the new policy selected.

Set up the my sites. 

Go to the Central Administration –> Application Management, and select “Manage service applications”.

Then select the “User Profile Service Application”

In the “User Profile Service Application”, click on “Setup My Sites”

This is where you need to set up the search center, my host location (in this case – root site collection of the Web Application that serves as the host) and personal site location (managed path within the host web application – “my” in my case). Take a look at the screenshot for all the other fields (which I have used in my case):

Set up the timer job for activity feed. 

Go to the Central Administration –> Monitoring –>Timer Job –> Review job definitions

Find the “User Profile Service Application – Activity Feed Job”, and set up the activity feed sync timer according to your needs.

All set up

Go to any SharePoint page and try the About me option under your logged in name and you will be taken to your own mysite

Saravjeet Lamba

SharePoint 2013 | MySites | Configuration | Setup |