It’s no secret that I am thrilled with the new social features of SharePoint 2010. I am most excited about the new Profile Picture handling. I strongly believe that the more we can show the faces of our colleagues to one another the more connected we will feel. Clearly Microsoft feels that way as witnessed by the many features that make use of the Profile Image like the Activity Feed and Colleagues list.
Exchange and Outlook
What about other applications like Outlook and Exchange? Outlook 2010 includes the Outlook Social Connector to present the social connections that the user has to the other actors in the conversation. The images in the OSC come from the users contacts and Active Directory. In this example Kobe’s picture is in Willa’s contacts but Ruby and Willa’s pictures are not. The next image shows the empty thumbnailPhoto attribute on Willa’s AD record. If the desire is to have the User Profile pictures synchronized from SharePoint back to AD, SharePoint 2010 can do that thanks in large part to the architectural decision by the Product Group to use Forefront Identity Manager to perform the Profile Synchronization.
Configure Profile Image Export
- Start with understanding the whole process: Configure profile synchronization (SharePoint 2010)
- If you have already configured the connection to AD all you have to do is add the permissions to the User Profile Service account in Active Directory for Create All Child Objects.
- Next, in Central Administration, go to the User Profile Service Application an in the People Section choose Manage User Properties.
- Locate the Picture property and hover-click Edit.
- In the Add new mapping section choose the appropriate connection to Active Directory (mine is DHT) choose the Attribute thumbnailPhoto and set the Direction to Export. Click Add to add the mapping.
- Run a full synchronization and if you watch the status you should see the Export phase.
- Following the synchronization you should see the thumbnailPhoto attribute populated in Active Directory.
- Reopen Outlook 2010 and you should now see each users images in the OSC.
Why should I care
Social connections in organizations are one of the most important factors in employee retention. On the list of the Big 12 Questions to determine employee engagement in the workplace is “Do I have a best friend at work?” The integration offered by SharePoint 2010 to other systems empowers organizations to implement cost effective solutions for employee engagement that can be managed centrally and governed efficiently.
Nice tip, I was trying to repeat your steps in SharePoint 2010 VHD but Picture attribute is URL type. Could you tell what kind of type you used?
Marcin, Not sure what you mean by “What Type”. I chose the out of the box Picture Field in the Profile Property Editor. (I did not add my own if that’s what you mean.)
Thanks for the details, Matthew! One question: the permissions needed for the User Profile Service account.
If I add Replicate Directory Changes permission to the “root” of the AD as well as “Create all Child Objects” is that all that is required? Is there more guidance anywhere on what permissions are required in an Active Directory?
Thanks, again.
Matt – this is very helpful, thanks for sharing this.
There is an additional step to modify the Offline Address Book (OAB) to include the photo, because if Outlook 2010 doesn’t have Active Directory connectivity, and the thumbnailPhoto attribute isn’t included as a Value attribute in the Offline Address Book, it won’t display the thumbnail.
Additionally, the global catalog needs to be modified to replicate the thumbnailPhoto attribute. Lastly, these settings should be carefully tested because of the additional bandwidth required for clients to download a larger address book as well as the increased network traffic for AD to replicate these photos.
See
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/06/01/455005.aspx
and
http://blogs.technet.com/b/ilvancri/archive/2009/11/17/upload-picture-in-outlook-2010-using-the-exchange-management-shell-exchange-2010.aspx
and for bandwidth considerations see the bottom of my post here:
http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/IT/archive/2010/07/20/how-to-get-photos-to-appear-in-outlook-global-address-list-gal.aspx
joe, from what I have seen this post covers it. I found this link helpful when writing up the post: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=47854
Hey Matthew,
thanks for the detailed description how to show the profile pic in Outlook… but what’s the best thing is the link regarding ‘Big 12 Questions to determine employee engagement in the workplace’ which is really interesting.
Thanks Andreas
what about Export from AD to Sharepoint?
P, you can try something like this…http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cjohnson/archive/2010/05/08/sharepoint-2010-office-2010-and-profile-pictures.aspx