user profiles in sharepoint

“There are actually 2 user profiles – one is a WSS profile and one is a MOSS profile. The WSS profile you access from Welcome user > My Settings page. The MOSS profiles are created when users are imported into the system from AD or LDAP. They are access from People Search or from a link off of your MySite.

The reason there are 2 is that you can install WSS without MOSS and they wanted a basic user profile. If you installed WSS without MOSS, you would see the profile (again, accessed through Welcome user > My Settings page) with about 3 properties.

If you install MOSS, do an import, and go to the WSS profile, you’ll see a bunch of properties added that MOSS adds. We now depricate the WSS profile. If you want to add property values to your profile, you need to go to your MOSS profile from your MySite (MySite > Details). You’ll be on the editprofile.aspx page. Add your properties. We then sync your properties to the WSS user list. You will see the values show up on the WSS profile after the sync happens.”

To make a long story short, use stsadm -o sync to force the property sync:

• -o -synctiming changes the Profile Sync job
• -o -sweeptiming changes the Quick Profile Sync job

I have gotten the best results by changing the schedule for the Profile Sync job to run every couple of minutes (stsadm -o sync -synctiming m:2). This may not be appropriate in a production environment with a large user population, though.