SharePoint redirector webpart based on Active Directory accounts

Our company intranet site has two audiences; home office and agents. The home office has different new content than the agent side. It's viewed as two separate intranets really, even though it's all in one site collection. Because of this we rely heavily on target audiences and redirects.

We hired an outside consultant to develop some custom webparts for us. One of those being a redirector webpart that would take Active Directory groups that we specified and redirect from one page to another. When it came time to implement this webpart it didn't work. I put it on the page and configured it but it simply didn't do anything. It was like the web part wasn't even on the page. After a 90 minute conference call with the consultant, and no progress I decided to take matters into my own hands.

There are several redirector webparts out there that make great promises. Some of them are code where you can cut and paste into Visual Studio, others are for purchase. I saw one for $500. I don't hold the purse strings where I work and since we'd already paid for a consultant to custom develop a web part I knew asking to purchase a different one wasn't going to happen. Then I stumbled upon this. (when you click, make sure you do a right click to open in new window, or you will navigate off of this page). It's a little piece of heaven.

This webpart uses the SharePoint people picker. This means, this is much easier for both myself and my end-users to use. No more remembering what the AD group names are and having to key them in just perfect. This searches and lets you select either the group or one user AD account you want.

The install is easy. Simply copy the .wsp file to the location you want to run it from, set up your stsadm commands in a batch file and run. Once you've done this, go to the site level and activate the feature. Now you are ready to add the web part to the appropriate page and configure it.