User Profile AD Sync - 2 Way Field-Level Update Permissions

Question

I've got a working AD->SharePoint 2010 user sync running and also have 2-way updating specificed for for some of the user profile fields via the users' My Site.

While this is very handy for contact lists and org charts, the organisation would like to maintain some control of the updates by having user detail changes go through an approval process (i.e. all updates to be approved by their manager first).

After much clicking around and many search engine queries, I haven't found any solution (or even questions) for this requirement.

As one of the aims is to keep the environment 'out of the box', is it possible to do this within SharePoint without 3rd party tools or custom development?

Thanks.

Answer 1

There is no out of the box way to handle validation or approval processes for user maintained fields in the User Profile.

I've worked through some scenarios for updating a selection of fields with validation, but that was using a custom ApplicationPage hosted in the layouts directory.

My recommendation would be to limit the fields that a user can edit to just the ones they cannot do something inappropriate with. For example, important ones that are maintained by IT like Job Title, Phone Number, and perhaps Location should not be editable but things like Interests and Past Projects are.