Microsoft / SharePoint / MOSS Single Sign-On Service not supported in non AD Environment?

After attempting for an hour or so to get the SSO service running on a MOSS system in a local machine (non Active Directory) environment, I discovered a couple of posts and some documentation from Microsoft which indicated that for the SSO service to be used with SharePoint/MOSS, the system must be integrated into an Active Directory system.

The problems come when you try to configure the SSO service in Central Admin, on the screen where you enter the Administration and Management credentials for the SSO service, when clicking OK here, you get presented with the Unknown Error Occurred or Access Denied error messages.

Synchronise Sharepoint User Profiles with Active Directory

Occasionally you may need to (re) synchronise your Sharepoint user profiles with their counterparts stored in Active Directory, particularly when the Active Directory information changes. Synchronisation occurs automatically when the SharePoint machine is restarted, and periodically acording to 2 SharePoint Timer jobs, “Profile Synchronization” and “Quick Profile Synchronization”.

If you need to do this manually, follow these steps;

1. Log into the Shared Services Administration site
2. Click on User Profiles and Properties
3. Click on Configure Profile Import
4. Under “Source” select the domain you wish to import from
5. Under “Default Access Account” select either the default content access account or specify account details – this account must have permission to access the Active Directory users (default) OU container
6. Click OK
7. Now select either a Full or Incremental import, a Full import will ensure that users deleted from Active Directory are removed from the profile database
8. Once the import has finished you can select “View Import Log” to reveal details about the import

Note. To perform incremental imports, the content access account must have the Replicate Changes permission for Windows 2000 Active Directory, this is not required for Windows Server 2003 Active Directory.