Using AD Groups in a Claims Based Web Application

I ran across an interesting little side effect of altering my claims enabled web application in SharePoint 2010 the other day I thought would be useful for others to know about. The situation has to do with accessing AD Groups from within the SharePoint people picker in a claims enabled environment.

Initially one of my SharePoint web applications was configured to allow authentication either through NTLM or through a Trusted Claims Provider (which was ADFS 2.0 sitting in front of AD of course). I could select which method I wanted to use when I navigated to the site through the default sign in page which presented a drop down list of the 2 authentication providers. At any time I could authenticate through NTLM or through the claims provider. This was all standard stuff so far.

I decided that I should clean up this web application since I was only using claims based authentication, and I removed the option for NTLM authentication. This just made the environment a little cleaner from a usage and demo perspective.

Then I logged into my web application through the ADFS 2.0 provider and proceeded on with additional work. I was configuring an existing library with a new metadata column – it was a People and Group column. My intention was to use this column in a demonstration where I was selecting groups were associated with specific items in the library. I wanted to be able to specify a different group for different documents in the library. In particular I wanted to use Active Directory groups and I already had a number of groups setup. So, I add my column and tried to select the AD groups I already had been using for some time. It turned out that my SharePoint people picker could no longer resolve the groups that I was searching for.

I checked over my AD installation. I checked that my groups were configured correctly. But nothing seemed out of the ordinary, nor would any changes here to improve the situation. Then I noticed that my people picker was missing the Active Directory node – it looked like this:

I was no longer able to search against any Active Directory groups!

So, with my upcoming demonstration looming, to try to resolve this I returned to Central Admin and the Manage Web Application page. I reconfigured the authentication providers for this web application so that once again I could sign in through either NTLM or my trusted ADFS 2.0 provider. I logged in once again using the ADFS 2.0 provider, went to add a group to my metadata column an I could find my AD groups again. My people picker now looked as follows:

Notice the Active Directory node on the left side. I could now find and select my ‘JointChiefs’ group and add it to my column (note I need to choose the one on the right side that is under the Active Directory heading.

So, it turns out that even if I’m always signing into SharePoint through my ADFS 2.0 claims provider, I need NTLM or Kerberos configured as an authentication provider for my web application in order to access Active Directory entities like groups in the SharePoint people picker. Please keep in mind that this is without any customization of the people picker using a custom claim provider.

Hope this helps someone that might run into the same situation.
– Antonio