Add, edit, or delete an audience rule (SharePoint Server 2010)

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010

Audience rules determine which users belong to an audience. When you add an audience, you are asked to create a rule that determines which users will be a member of the audience. Audiences must have at least one audience rule. You can add audience rules to an audience and you can edit or delete existing rules for an audience. New or edited audience rules are not applied until the audience is compiled. For more information, see Compile an audience (SharePoint Server 2010).

Each audience rule includes the following elements:

• Operand identifies the user or property that you want to include in the query for the rule.

• Operator determines whether users who are compared to the value are included in or excluded from the rule.

• Value is the point of comparison that is used by the query.

Audiences with multiple rules use one of the following sets of logic:

• Satisfy all of the rules: Users must match all rules to become members of the audience. Added rules tend to reduce the size of the audience.

• Satisfy any of the rules: Users that match any rules become members of the audience. Added rules tend to increase the size of the audience.

In this article:

• Add an audience rule

• Edit an audience rule

• Delete an audience rule

Add an audience rule

Adding audience rules is a good practice in the following situations:

• You are targeting an audience by membership or reporting structure, and you want to add users in a different distribution list or reporting to a different manager. To do this, you would add a new value for the user operand.

• You are currently targeting by reporting structure and want to target by membership in a distribution list. To do this, you would add a new operator the user operand.

• You are currently targeting an audience by membership or reporting structure, and you want to expand or reduce the membership based on a user profile property. To do this, you would add a new operand.

• You are targeting an audience based on one property and you want to expand or reduce the membership based on an additional property. To do this, you would add a new property operand.

To add an audience rule

1. Verify that you have the following administrative credentials:

   • You are a member of the Farm Administrators group.

2. On the Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

3. On the Service Applications page, in the list of service applications, click the row of the User Profile service application that you want to configure.

   Clicking the row activates options in the ribbon.

4. In the Operations group of the ribbon, click Manage.

5. On the Manage Profile Service page, in the People section, click Manage Audiences.

6. On the View Audiences page, point to the name of the audience that you want to configure, click the arrow that appears, and then click View Properties.

7. On the View Audience Properties page, in the Audience Rules section, click Add rule.

8. On the Add Audience Rule page, take one of the following actions:

   • To add a rule based on a user, for example, all users who report to a specific manager:

     1. In the Operand section, select User.

     2. In the Operator section, select Reports Under to create a rule based on organizational hierarchy or select Member Of to target content by group or distribution list.

     3. In the Value box, type a value or select a user to use when evaluating the property against this rule.

        • For a Reports Under rule, select the person who is the manager of the users you want to include in the audience.

        • For a Member Of rule, select the group or distribution list that the user must belong to in order to be included in the audience.

     To create an audience based on a group of people who report to a specific manager, for example, you would select User in the Operand section, select Reports Under from the Operator list, and then select the name of the manager in the Value section.

   • To add a rule based on a user profile property, for example, all users whose job title is "accountant":

     1. In the Operand section, select Property, and then select a user profile property from the list.

     2. From the Operator list, select an operator for the property. Each user profile property has a slightly different set of operators. For example, the operators for the Job Title property are Contains and Not Contains. To find descriptions of the operators available in the UI, see Operators (Transact-SQL).

     3. In the Value section, type a value to use when evaluating the property against this rule.

   For example, if you have an audience called "Finance", you could create an audience rule to target content to all accountants in your organization by selecting the Job Title user profile property from the Property list, selecting the Contains operator from the Operator list, and then typing "accountant" in the Value text box.

   Note

   You can only select one operator per rule by using Central Administration. To add audience rules that contain more complex logic, you must use the SharePoint Server 2010 object model. For more information, see Audience Class (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=185879).

9. Click OK.

Edit an audience rule

Editing an audience rule is a good practice when you want to make a change to the following:

• Operator: You might change the operator if the actual membership of the list is too narrow or broad. For example, you might change the = (Equals) operator to the Contains operator to increase the membership of the audience.

• Value: You might change the target value for an audience rule if you are evaluating the right user operand or property, but the membership is larger or smaller than intended, or there are users or groups that you want to include or exclude based on changing business needs. If the property is multivalued, you can also add one or more additional values.

• Operand: This is the least likely change, because it is almost always a better practice to add a new rule. However, you might change a User operand based on reporting structure or membership in a distribution list to a Property operand based on a manager, title, or other property that is intended to create an audience with a similar but better-targeted membership.

To edit an audience rule

1. Verify that you have at least one of the following administrative credentials:

   • You are a member of the Farm Administrators group.

   • You are a service application administrator for the User Profile service application that contains the audience rule that you want to edit.

   • You are an administrator of the Audience feature of the User Profile service application that contains the audience rule that you want to edit.

2. On the Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

3. On the Service Applications page, in the list of service applications, click the row of the User Profile service application that you want to configure.

   Clicking the row activates options in the ribbon.

4. In the Operations group of the ribbon, click Manage.

5. On the Manage Profile Service page, in the People section, click Manage Audiences.

6. On the View Audiences page, point to the audience that you want to configure, click the arrow that appears, and then click View Properties.

7. On the View Audience Properties page, in the Audience Rules section, click the rule that you want to edit.

8. On the Edit Audience Rule page, take one of the following actions:

   • To base the audience rule on a user, for example, all users who report to a specific manager:

     1. In the Operand section, select User.

     2. In the Operator section, select Reports Under to create a rule based on organizational hierarchy or select Member Of to target content by group or distribution list.

     3. In the Value box, type a value or select a user to use when evaluating the property against this rule.

        • For a Reports Under rule, select the person who is the manager of the users you want to include in the audience.

        • For a Member Of rule, select the group or distribution list that the user must belong to in order to be included in the audience.

     To create an audience based on a group of people who report to a specific manager, for example, you would select User in the Operand section, select Reports Under from the Operator list, and then select the name of the manager in the Value section.

   • To base the audience rule on a user profile property, for example, all users whose job title is "accountant":

     1. In the Operand section, select Property, and then select a user profile property from the list.

     2. From the Operator list, select an operator for the property. Each user profile property has a slightly different set of operators. For example, the operators for the Job Title property are Contains and Not Contains. To find descriptions of the operators available in the UI, see Operators (Transact-SQL).

     3. In the Value section, type a value to use when evaluating the property against this rule.

   For example, if you have an audience called "Finance", you could create an audience rule to target content to all accountants in your organization by selecting the Job Title user profile property from the Property list, selecting the Contains operator from the Operator list, and then typing "accountant" in the Value text box.

   Note

   You can only select one operator per rule by using Central Administration. To add audience rules that contain more complex logic, you must use the SharePoint Server 2010 object model. For more information, see Audience Class (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkID=185879).

9. Click OK.

Delete an audience rule

The membership of an audience can be expanded or reduced if the business need for targeting content has changed. If an audience must satisfy all rules, deleting an audience rule expands the membership. If an audience can satisfy any of the rules, deleting an audience rule reduces the membership. If the audience itself is no longer needed, you should delete the entire audience instead of just specific rules.

To delete an audience rule

1. Verify that you have at least one of the following administrative credentials:

   • You are a member of the Farm Administrators group.

   • You are a service application administrator for the User Profile service application that contains the audience rule that you want to delete.

   • You are an administrator of the Audience feature of the User Profile service application that contains the audience rule that you want to delete.

2. On the Central Administration Web site, in the Application Management section, click Manage service applications.

3. On the Service Applications page, in the list of service applications, click the row of the User Profile service application that you want to configure.

   Clicking the row activates options in the ribbon.

4. On the Manage Profile Service page, in the People section, click Manage Audiences.

5. On the View Audiences page, point to the audience that you want to configure, click the arrow that appears, and then click View Properties.

6. On the View Audience Properties page, in the Audience Rules section, click the rule that you want to delete.

7. At the bottom of the Edit Audience Rule page, click Delete.

8. Click OK to confirm the deletion.

See Also

Concepts

Manage audiences (SharePoint Server 2010)
User Profile service application overview (SharePoint Server 2010)
Plan for profile synchronization (SharePoint Server 2010)