Anyway to know who the admin user is?

Question

The person who installed and managed our Sharepoint environment (2007) left the company a few months back. We thought we had the appropriate access for all the sharepoint services, but have found 1 area we can not access.

In SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration, under Shared Services Administration, there is a link for a custom named Shared Services instance. This link goes to http://< server_name >/ssp/admin. No Active Directory account that we have tried has access to this page. Additionally, we tried the local admin account on the server. No dice.

We have full admin access to the Sharepoint database though. Is there a query we can run to determine who has access to this page?

Answer 1

A farm admin can grant access to the Shared Services Administration site. Check out this link for more details.

From the article:

Use the farm administrator account to add users to the Shared Services administration site Site collection administrators for the Shared Services Administration site can add or remove any account from any group, including their own personal accounts. This can result in a situation where no users are site collection administrators and permissions for the site can no longer be managed. It can even result in a situation where no user has any permission to the site at all. Site collection administrators should be careful not to do this. However, if this does occur, a farm administrator account can be used to add a site collection administrator for the site. The farm administrator can also add services permissions to the site if the Manage Permissions permission is removed from all users.

Answer 2

Login into the SP server with a local admin account. Open a browser with 'Run as administrator' (right click the browser icon). Open the Central Administration > Security > Manage the farm administrators group.

By opening the browser with 'Run as administrator' many sections of Central Administration become available when your permissions are not properly configured.

Answer 3

Just go to the Application Management. Under Sharepoint Site management go to Site Collection administrators. choose the ssp admin site and give the Farm admin service account as a primary owner and it should work for you.

Answer 4

It appears that you are already a 'Farm Administrator' of the farm.

To gain access to the Shared Services Administration - link (Shared Services Provider - SSP) eg. http://< server_name >/ssp/admin, perform the following steps:

1. In Central Administration, click on 'Application Management'.
2. Under Application Security, click on 'Policy for Web Application'.
3. Select the Web Application from the drop down menu. This would probably be "http://< server_name >". Verify and double check you have the Shared Services Provider (SSP) you are trying to log in to.
4. Once the Web Application is set to the SSP you want to 'manage', simply add your AD username by clicking 'Add Users', (All zones), click next,
5. Type in your username in the format DOMAIN\Username
6. Select 'Full Control' permissions
7. Click 'Finish'.

You should now have Full Control access to the SSP.

To verify who has access to the SSP:

1. See step number 4 above and review the user accounts who have permissions to the SSP.

2. Visit: http://< server_name >/ssp/admin/_layouts/settings.aspx and review usernames in 'Peoples and Groups', 'Site collection administrators' and 'Advanced permissions'