Fix For Users profile pictures not displayed in SharePoint online sites and delve

Sriram Varadarajan
 
Solution Architect
September 24, 2016
 
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Some users of our SharePoint Online environment were not able to see their profile Photo displayed in DELVE and SharePoint. As this seems to be a common problem with most of the users, this article explains you how to fix this profile picture issue.

In SharePoint:

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Delve:

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How to get the photo updated:

In SharePoint Online, we have got 2 scenarios to get the Photo updated for the user.

1. Users with Exchange online license and

2. Users without.

First let’s talk about the users with exchange online license:

To start with, user need to visit the below url: https://outlook.office.com/owa/?path=/options/myaccount/action/photo and upload their photo’s there. But, still if they get in to SharePoint online they won’t be seeing their updated photo in the Top bar, they need to perform an another action.

The user should browse to their DELVE profile page, please refer to get in to DELVE. A set of action gets triggered when they do so;

· During the page load of Me.aspx, a request is made for the large thumbnail photo. This generates a call to Exchange Online for the user’s profile picture.

· If the user has an Exchange Online mailbox, and the mailbox contains a profile picture for the user, SharePoint Online will request the picture from Exchange Online.

· SharePoint Online creates a small, medium, and large thumbnail photo from the picture that was returned from Exchange Online. The photos are saved in a folder in the User Photos Library for the My Site Host site collection. The name of the folder will vary, depending on what the My Site Host root web locale is set to at the time of photo upload or synchronization.

· The Picture Timestamp, Picture Placeholder State and the Picture Exchange Sync State profile properties for the user are set or updated to reflect the profile picture synchronization state

Pictorial Representation:

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SharePoint Online picture synchronization for users without an Exchange Online mailbox

Let’s see what we need to do for users without Exchange online license:

The user should browse to their DELVE profile page, please refer to get in to DELVE. A set of action gets triggered when they do so;

Note When a user doesn’t have an Exchange Online license, the Picture property will have an Upload picture button. The Picture Exchange State Property is set to 0

1.Click the Basic Information tab, and then click Upload picture. The Choose a picture dialog box is displayed.

2.The user uploads a picture to SharePoint Online from the Choose a picture dialog box.

3.SharePoint Online creates a small, medium, and large thumbnail photo from the uploaded picture. The photos are saved in a folder in the User Photos Library for the My Site Host site collection. The name of the folder will vary, depending on what the My Site Host root web locale is set to at the time of photo upload or synchronization.

4.The Picture Timestamp, Picture Placeholder State and the Picture Exchange Sync State profile properties for the user are set or updated to reflect the profile picture synchronization state

NOTE: if the picture exchange sync state property doesn’t get reflected, please set it to 1 manually. By setting this as 1 we’re informing the SYNC that we have got an update profile Photo for the users that needs to be synced.

Some of the facts to keep in mind:

•Guest user profile pictures aren’t synced to SharePoint Online.

•By default, SharePoint Online will provide three placeholder pictures (SThumb.jpg, MThumb.jpg, and LThumb.jpg) for the user.

•Each user profile has a property named Picture (PictureUrl) that points to the medium file (MThumb.jpg) that’s located in the My Site Host site collection.

•By default, the Picture property in the user profile application is editable. The property setting has to be editable for picture synchronization and for a user profile picture upload to be successful.

•The picture is synced down from Exchange Online only once every 72 hours.

•The My Site Host site collection must have available quota in order to store new pictures.

Author Info

Sriram Varadarajan
 
Solution Architect
 
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Sriram is a Technology Evangelist with 15+ years experience in Microsoft Technologies. He is an enterprise architect working for large pharmaceutical organization which has presence globally with largest Microsoft implementation ...read more
 

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