I’ve been feeling the itch to return the SharePoint 2010 My Site topic, so I spent a little more time actively working on mine today.  In a matter of moments, I tripped across the first noteworthy item when I clicked the My Settings button in the dropdown under my name in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

The page which surfaced as a result of that click was, bizarrely, an un-editable version of my profile, with no sign of an Edit button or even an editable field, and only a Close button upon which I could act.

Curious, no?  I certainly thought so, and after clicking the My Profile button in the same dropdown (where I was led to an editable version of My Profile via the handy Edit My Profile hyperlink), I did a little investigating. It turns out the My Settings feature can be disabled, and I’m guessing that’s the case with mine. However, I’m still in the dark as to why it would be considered an acceptable user experience to present a user with an un-editable version of their My Profile page under these circumstances, and with absolutely no indication as to why such a useless page is being presented.

Further investigation surfaced what appears to be a vastly improved, alternative user experience. The solution, devised by Jesper M. Christensen, involves the creation of a new permissions policy, and is described in his blog post, SharePoint 2010 Foundation: Cannot change “My Settings” of a user. Note, however, that this is a solution that an Administrator will need to put in place and not one that ends users will be able to put into place on their own. Still, I’m documenting it here by way of helping to broadcast the means to an improved user experience.