This is a list of things that need to happen/occur to get Ratings working in you SharePoint 2010 list. It is actually a compilation of items I’ve found on the internet which tell you how to do this, but usually, if it’s not working, you need at least most of the items below.

In Central Administration:
Make sure these services are started (CA/Manage Services on Server):

• User Profile Service
• User Profile Synchronization Service

Jobs to be scheduled (CA\Monitoring\Timer Jobs\Review Job Definitions ):

• User Profile Service Application – Activity Feed Job
• User Profile Service Application – Social Data Maintenance Job
• User Profile Service Application – Social Rating Synchronization Job

In CA\Manage Service Applications – User Profile Service Application\Manage User Permissions, make sure All Authenticated Users have the ‘Use Social Features’ checkbox selected.

In CA\Manage Web Applications – Click on your web application and then:

• In Ribbon, click on ‘Service Connections’
• Make sure Checkbox for User Profile Service Application is selected

Make sure that Ratings is ‘turned on’ within your list. Go to your List and click the List tab and then choose ‘List Settings’. There, you will find the ‘Ratings Settings’. Click that item and make sure that you choose ‘Yes’ for ‘Allow items in this list to be rated’.

Also, make sure that, in the list of columns available in your list, both these should be available:

• Rating (0-5)
• Number of Ratings

Of course, in your View, the ‘Number of Ratings’ does not need to be visible.

Once you’ve got this all set up, you can add your ratings, and manually run the #2 and #3 timer jobs above, and you should see the ratings working. If you are seeing blue stars once the ratings timer jobs run, then it’s working.

One thing to note is that these timer jobs are normally set up to run every hour. If you need to see the ratings appear/change more quickly, you should change the settings for them.