Continuing to work through my backlog of belated postings, this one addresses a little known feature of SPS. Audience targeting is a feature of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 that allows content managers to filter specific listings and news items in portal areas so that they are displayed to some users and hidden to others. The same feature can also be used to target entire web parts to audiences so that only certain groups see the data. This is not intended as a security mechanism because, while the web part may be hidden to a user, they would still have access to it if they know the URL to reach it. Support for audience targeting is provided for most web parts hosted in a SharePoint Portal area but not in WSS sites. To target a web part to an audience follow the steps to define and compile an Audience (which can be found here) then follow these steps:
- Add the web part to an area page
- Click Edit Page
- Click the context menu for the web part and choose Modify Shared Web Part
- Expand the Advanced section at the bottom of the properties pane
- Click the Select button under Target Audiences at the bottom of the Advanced section
- Choose an Audience to target
- Click OK
- Click Apply
If you are not a member of the audience you should no longer see the web part after you refresh the page. Only members of the audience will see the web part displayed.