The CKS:WLA is a membership provider that extends the SharePoint user base to include some of the 350+ million users around the world with active Windows Live IDs. It enables an administrator to add Windows Live ID users to a SharePoint site and provides a new “Authenticated Live Users” group that can be added to a SharePoint site via the People and Groups admin page.

This initial version of the CKS:WLA provider has the following features:

• Windows Live ID authentication supported directly in SharePoint.
• Ability to add and resolve a WLID user using an e-mail address
• "Authenticated Live Users" group, which works just like the built-in "NT_AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users" group that can be used for any SharePoint access control list.
• Ability to lock or blacklist a WLID user.
• “Windows Live Authentication Setting Sync” Feature at the site collection level, which upon being activated, will synchronize WLID user information to all site collections that have the feature activated, so the users will not have to register again for each new site collection they access.