Before jumping into Jive Connects for Microsoft SharePoint, you’ll want to put some
thought into some configuration options.
Prerequisites
Jive Connects for Microsoft SharePoint requires Jive SBS 4.0.1 or greater and either
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
2007. The SharePoint servers must have .NET 3.5 installed. In order to search
SharePoint from Jive you must be using domain accounts for the SharePoint application pool accounts
and they must be using a domain that is at a domain functional level of Windows 2003
or later.
Connections
Determine what SharePoint sites and Jive instances you
want to connect. SharePoint can connect to multiple Jive installations
and Jive can
connect to multiple SharePoint sites across multiple SharePoint farms.
Policies
SharePoint activity can be shown in Jive SBS, but restricted by policies that are
enforced by SharePoint farm administrators. Consider what policies you want to put
in place to keep your sensitive data secure while still making the most use out of
SharePoint by extending it in to the social world of Jive.
Authentication
You have two authentication options with Jive Connects for Microsoft SharePoint:
credential delegation using Kerberos or impersonation using NTLM. Kerberos is the
recommended approach if you already have that in your environment. If you use
impersonation, pay close attention to the Farm Configuration for Jive screen in
SharePoint and the System Properties in
Jive where you can
put in place extra security measures when using impersonation.
- NTLM (NT Lan Manager) is a Microsoft Windows authentication implementation
based on challenge/response. NTLM can be used to authenticate a user without
transmitting a password over the network. A limitation of NTLM is that it
cannot "delegate" a user's credentials (token) beyond the server requesting
authentication. A benefit of NTLM is that it is relatively simple to
configure.
- Kerberos is form of user/service authentication that originated from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Microsoft has implemented a
form of Windows authentication based on Kerberos. Similar to NTLM, Kerberos
can also be used to authenticate a user without transmitting a user's
password over the network. A benefit of Kerberos is that it can allow a
user's credentials (token) to be delegated from one server to another. A
downside to Kerberos is that it can be difficult to configure.
Note: If you
decide to configure the Jive SBS Connector for SharePoint with Kerberos,
please plan carefully and take your time.
Authentication Scenarios, contains information related to
NTLM and Kerberos and how they were used to demonstrate the
Jive/SharePoint integration.