It’s a common request, when starting to use the FIM 2010 Portal for self-service, to try to redirect the root url of the FIM portal to the IdentityManagement sub-site. If you have moved to SPF 2013 you will find that none of the methods available in easy to find documentation from Microsoft will work.
Using for example the IIS HTTP Redirect as suggested on the TechNet Wiki. Trying this will however mess-up your site since it will affect your CSS.
On the FIM TechNet site there is also a note close to the bottom of the Installing the FIM 2010 R2 Server Components page about “To redirect the FIM Portal”. This will not work either because SPF 2013 just ignores the default.aspx page.
So how should we do it?
After some investigation I found the clue to the solution in a SharePoint forum thread. The solution was presented by Per Jakobsen.
[EDIT 2018-12-13]
I now have a brand new solution to this problem… Please ignore old solution and use my new PowerShell script on Gist.
— old solution below–
This is how I have solved it.
Create a document using notepad and call it, for example, RedirectFIM.aspx. The file should have the following content.
<html> <head> <title>Redirect to IdentityManagement site</title> <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://im.company.com/IdentityManagement/default.aspx" /> </head> <body> </body> </html>
Upload this file as a new document to the Shared Documents library in SharePoint.
You can now try that it is working by clicking on it. You should be redirected to our familiar FIM homepage.
When we know it is working we can set it as homepage for the site. Since this is a subsite we need to use PowerShell to do it.
Start the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell and configure the uploaded page as WelcomePage for the root site.
$w = Get-SPWeb https://im.company.com $root = $w.RootFolder $root.WelcomePage = "Shared%20Documents/RedirectFIM.aspx" $root.Update()
If you now access the root site https://im.company.com you will end up being redirected to the IdentityManagement site. If you need to access the root site you can always use the old default home page at https://im.company.com/SitePages/Home.aspx
Thank you very much Kent. Works like a charm on SP2010 aswell!
Do not Forget do give permission on the Redirect file
That’s true you need to give Authenticated Users Read access to the redirect file (or the whole site collection). I actually ran into that issue at a cu today.
I had to create the Share Library on my site…(non was there)…and then worked great.
Thanks,
D
Yes, it depends on the Template in SharePoint used when creating it, if the document library exists or not.
Is there a reason why you can’t put the URL directly in the powershell, something like this:
$root.WelcomePage = “IdentityManagement/default.aspx”
I am currently still running SPF 2010, so have not yet been able to try this on 2013.
That might actually work, but haven’t tried it. Please let me know if you try and it works.
Hi Kent.
An update. On SPF 2010, I tried setting
$root.WelcomePage = “IdentityManagement/default.aspx”
and it worked without having to create a Shared Document. Hopefully that means it is transferrable to 2013 as well.
Great news! I’ll try myself in my next deployment 🙂
Matthew, thanks your input!
It just works with SP 2016 on W2K16 too.
I had to grant Authenticated Users read access to the MIM portal site to make it work, but I can confirm that $root.WelcomePage = “IdentityManagement/default.aspx” also works on SPF 2013.
This worked as charm!! Thanks Matthew
You’re an absolute legend Kent – much obliged. I knew someone would have done this before, but I should have known it was you!
the $root.WelcomePage seems to be working only per user..
Not sure I understand the comment “per user”. If you give Authenticated Users Read on the “root” site the redirect works for everyone.