Too Many Words

My boss came to me today with a unique challenge - get rid of a redundant dialog that pops up in his workflow. The following are step-by-step instructions to remove the authentication prompt for SharePoint Portal Server when accessing it using Integrated Windows Authentication. This is a poorly- (if at all-) documented process (an hour of Google and MSDN searches did not return any relevant results; the unrelated “Single Sign-On” dominates the results). As this is a computer blog occasionally, I’ve decided to start putting more computer-related topics up.

Various disclaimers: Do all this at your own risk, back up whatever you want beforehand, don’t expose your network, document what you do, etc.

Enabling Automatic Logon to SharePoint Portal Server using Integrated Windows Authentication

1. Open IIS on the server.
2. In the SharePoint site Properties » Directory Security » Edit… dialog disable Anonymous Access and enable Integrated Windows Authentication.
3. Save & exit IIS.
4. Open Internet Explorer » Internet Options…
5. In the Security tab, select Local Intranet and click the Sites button.
6. Click Advanced and add [your SharePoint url]. Do not select Require server verification (https) for all sites in this zone.
7. Close the Sites dialog and click Custom Level. Scroll down to User Authentication and check Automatic Logon only in Intranet zone.
8. Save and exit the options dialog.

Obviously steps 4 - 8 need to be repeated on every client machine, or you can implement them through user policies on the server and they’ll propagate to the clients. Just thought this might help someone else looking to solve the same problem.

Filed under: Tips, Information, Technology