SharePoint Audience Targeting Quirk
I recently ran into a strange quirk/bug when setting a target audience on a web part. In the particular site collection where the web part resides, a number of cross-site groups exist.
For the sake of example, imagine that the site collection has several cross-site groups with simlar names. Ex:
- IT
- IT Designers
- IT Administrators
When targeting the web part to either the IT Designers or IT Administrators cross-site group, the web part is able to correctly apply the audience. However, when the IT group is used, the web part configuration for audiences is unable to determine the correct group when the web part is rendered on the page.
It would appear that when selecting a target audience (if it is a SharePoint group), the group name must be unique and not contain a portion of another group name. In my case, while the IT group name is unique, the IT Designers and IT Administrators groups also contain the string “IT”.