Skip to main content

SharePoint 2010 displays 'System Account' as the logged in user

Background

Sometimes SharePoint administrators would like to update content in their site in certain ways, but don't want everything to show up as being last modified by them by name. Instead, they would prefer that the record simply show that it was last updated by System Account. On the other hand, sometimes administrators are not sure why SharePoint shows them as being logged in as System Account and why everything they edit or upload is tagged as such.

The Problem

It is not immediately clear in SharePoint when the user will be shown as System Account. The options to control this are also not immediately obvious. At times the problem is even rooted in what account is being used to run the application pool for a web application.

If the identity of the application pool is that of a particular administrator or if the administrator logs in as the farm account or the application pool account, then SharePoint will show that person as System Account. If none of these three is the case then SharePoint checks the web application's User Policies. The User Policies can specify certain access permissions for all content within web application and specifies whether users are shown as System Account. These settings are configurable by zone and can apply to AD Users and AD Groups. If the logged in user and the groups he or she is part of are specified in the User Policies as System Account, then SharePoint will display the person's name and update records with their username instead of System Account.

How to change it

If your issue stems from the User Policies then you have to make the change in Central Administration. Navigate to theManage web applications page, which can be found at that this URL:

http://CentralAdminHostName:PortNumber/_admin/WebApplicationList.aspx

Select the web application that you would like to modify and click on the User Policy button on the ribbon. That will show the Policy for Web Application dialog box where you can add an AD group or user and set the proper options for them. The option labeled as Account operates as System, when checked, will show the user as System Account.

If you issue stems from the fact that your web application is running as your personal user account, then you may have not set up SharePoint as recommended. You can use the following stsadm command (for which there is no PowerShell cmdlet).

stsadm -o updatefarmcredentials ...
Described here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262150(office.12).aspx

Followed by:

iisreset

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to get SPUser or SPGroup from Person or Group field

You have person or group field in SharePoint list and you want to programmatically get the user or person. The below code to gets SPUser from User or Group field in the list when multiple choice and Groups are not allowed in the field: //get SPUser SPFieldUser userField = (SPFieldUser)item.Fields.GetField("Users"); SPFieldUserValue userFieldValue = (SPFieldUserValue)userField.GetFieldValue(item["Users"].ToString()); SPUser user = userFieldValue.User; This part of code would help you to get SPUser when multiple choice is allowed and groups are not allowed: //Multiple choices are allowed SPFieldUser userField = (SPFieldUser)item.Fields.GetField("Users"); SPFieldUserValueCollection userFieldValueCollection = (SPFieldUserValueCollection)userField.GetFieldValue(item["Users"].ToString()); foreach (SPFieldUserValue userFieldValue in userFieldValueCollection) {     Console.WriteLine("     " + userFieldValue.User.LoginName); } And when group
1 comment
Read more

SharePoint publishing page scheduling

In SharePoint 2010 publishing enabled team site collection is not showing schedule button in publish ribbon. Solution: Here is how to enable it  though the UI: Locate the SharePoint Server Web site on which you want to enable content approval and item scheduling. Click  Site Actions , click  Site Settings , and then click  Modify Pages Library Settings . Under  General Settings , click  Versioning Settings . Click  Yes  next to  Content Approval , and then click  OK . Click  Manage item scheduling .   Click to enable the  Enable scheduling of items in this list  check box, and then click  OK .
2 comments
Read more

Changing Content Type Hub URL

Change the Hub URL through powershell by using: Set-SPMetadataServiceApplication -Identity " " -HubURI " " For Ex: Set-SPMetadataServiceApplication -Identity "Managed Metadata Service" -HubURI "http://contenttype.Domain.Com" When you try to do this you get this rather scary message: This is SharePoint telling you that this is a major thing so be careful! Essentially all your content types that you have published out will be removed if they can, and you have to republish all of your content types out again which can cause some issue.
2 comments
Read more