SharePoint Extranet Solutions with ISA Server 2006 – Part 8: Publishing

Finally, we’ve arrived at the last part of the series where everything should come together!

Let the SharePoint publishing begin!

1. On the right pane, select the Tasks tab and click Publish SharePoint sites
2. Name the publishing rule and click Next
3. Select Publish a single Web site or load balancer and click Next 
4. Use SSL to connect to the published Web server or server farm and click Next 
5. Enter the Internal site name. The internal name is in this case the host header in the Extranet Web application that was extended to the Extranet zone: dmz.extranet.sharepointnotes.local
6. If the ISA server cannot resolve the internal site name (e.g. if it is not created as a A record in DNS), specify the computer name or IP address. Click Next
7. Accept requests for This domain name (type below), enter the Public name and click Next. The public name is the web site name, the clients will use to access the site. In this case extranet.sharepointnotes.local
8. Select the Web listener to use. If you haven’t one already, here’s how to create one:
   • Click New 
   • Name the listener and click Next
   • Select Require SSL secured connection with clients and click Next
   • Select the External network interface and click Select IP Addresses
   • Select Specified IP Addresses on the ISA Server computer in the selected network and select the IP Address that is used to server internal users coming from the Internet. Click Add and OK
   • Back on the Web Listener IP Addresses page click Next
   • Select Assign a certificate for each IP address and click Select Certificate 
   • Choose the certificate issued to extranet.sharepointnotes.local and click Select and then Next 
   • Use HTML Forms Authentication and let ISA validate using LDAP (Active Directory). Click Next
   • Do not enable SSO and click Next
   • Click Finish and OK to accept the warning
9. Make sure the newly created listener is selected and click Next 
10. Use Basic authentication and click Next 
11. Select SharePoint AAM is already configured and click Next
12. Remove All Authenticated users and click Add to add the User Set you created earlier. Click Next
13. Click Finish and Apply the changes
14. Right-click the new rule and select Properties
15. Select the To tab. Since we are forwarding requests from one URL to another, make sure the Forward the original host header option is not selected.
16. Select the Bridging tab
17. Since we are redirecting from SSL to HTTP, make sure the Redirect requests to HTTP port 80 is selected and that Redirect requests to SSL port is not selected
18. Click OK and Apply the changes

The rule is now created and out Extranet site is published and available for external users. Let’s test it:

1. To test external access, browse to https://extranet.sharepointnotes.local
2. Login using a administrative user in the format user@dmzad.local
3. Once the credentials are validated by ISA Server, the request is forwarded to MOSS and the user is presented with a new Sign In page. Log in again using the same credentials.
4. A good method to test access and especially Alternate Access Mappings is to create a new site:
   • From Site Actions select Create
   • In the Web Pages section select Sites and Workspaces
   • Enter a Title, URL name and select a site template. 
   • Leave other settings with their default values and click Create
5. Verify the new site was created and displayed correctly. If that isn’t the case it normally indicates that the Alternate Access Mappings is configured incorrectly. 

Done! I hope you enjoyed the series. If so, drop me a note 🙂 Please also drop me a note, if you know how to avoid to enter crendetials twice (once on ISA and again on MOSS)!