How to sync thumbnail photo from Active Directory to a SharePoint list | SharePoint AD Information Sync - BoostSolutions App, Saas & Software for Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint

How to sync thumbnail photo from Active Directory to a SharePoint list?

Active Directory has an attribute (thumnailphoto) to store a thumbnail portrait photograph of each user. AD Information Sync also supports to sync this attribute to the SharePoint list.

In this article, we will demonstrate how to sync the attribute thumbnailphoto to a SharePoint contact list and a custom list.

WHAT YOU'LL GET

The thumbnail photos of user objects are synced to the Staff Info list from Active Directory.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

AD Information Sync

The sample data we use for this case

And we have 6 users in the Active Directory as following.

Sync thumbnail photo in Active Directory to a SharePoint contact list

Download the trial version of AD Information Sync and install it to your SharePoint server.
Navigate to the site in which the Employee Info list is located.
In the upper right corner, click Settings and then click Site Settings.
On the Site Settings page, click AD Information Sync settings under BoostSolutions Software section in the bottom right corner of the page.
On the AD Information Sync Settings page, click Create Profile to create a new profile, specify a unique name for it.
In the List section, select the SharePoint list to which we will synchronize the information from Active Directory. Select Employee Info list from the dropdown list.
In the Active Directory section, specify a domain server and user credentials to connect to the domain server (Ensure the user account you specify has the appropriate permissions to access the domain server). Then click Connect. If everything goes right, it will show Connection attempt successful under the Connect button. If things went wrong, please check the user account you specified, make sure it has the permissions required.
In the Filter section, specify the information you want to synchronize. Specify the object type as User.
In the Column Mapping section, select an AD attribute from the drop-down list and map it to the SharePoint list column.

To sync thumbnail photos to the SharePoint Contacts list, select the Sync Contact Picture option, and then select the Picture(thumbnailPhoto) attribute.

Note that this option is only available when the type of the SharePoint list is Contacts.
Keep other settings as default and click OK to save the settings for the profile.
On the AD Information Sync Settings page, click Sync Now for the profile we created.
A confirmation message will appear to remind you that the synchronization will modify data in Active Directory or the SharePoint list of this profile. Click OK to start the synchronization.
Wait for a few seconds for the synchronization to be completed. Navigate to the Employee Info list and you will find that those 6 users in the Active Directory have been imported to the SharePoint list, and the thumbnail photos have been synced as following.
Check details of any of these users such as Mike, you can see that the thumbnail photo has been synced as an attachment as following.
Click the attachment, you will see the thumbnail photo.

Sync thumbnail photo to a SharePoint custom list

Download the trial version of AD Information Sync and install it to your SharePoint server.
Navigate to the site in which the Staff Info list is located.
In the upper right corner, click Settings and then click Site Settings.
On the Site Settings page, click AD Information Sync settings under BoostSolutions Software section in the bottom right corner of the page.
On the AD Information Sync Settings page, click Create Profile to create a new profile, specify a unique name for it.
In the List section, select the SharePoint list to which we will synchronize the information from Active Directory. Select Staff Info list from the dropdown list.
In the Active Directory section, specify a domain server and user credentials to connect to the domain server (Ensure the user account you specify has the appropriate permissions to access the domain server). Then click Connect. If everything goes right, it will show Connection attempt successful under the Connect button. If things went wrong, please check the user account you specified, make sure it has the permissions required.
In the Filter section, specify the object type as User.
In the Column Mapping section, select an AD attribute from the drop-down list and map it to the SharePoint list column.

To sync thumbnail photos to a non-contacts list, select the Picture(thumbnailPhoto) from the drop-down list in AD Attribute and map it to the Thumbnail Photo column (the column type is Hyperlink or Picture).

Note that if the photo does not appear in the SharePoint list after synchronization, make sure the Format URL as option is set to Picture for the Thumbnail Photo column.
Keep other settings as default and click OK to save the settings for the profile.
On the AD Information Sync Settings page, click Sync Now for the profile we created.
A confirmation message will appear to remind you that the synchronization will modify data in Active Directory or the SharePoint list of this profile. Click OK to start the synchronization.
Wait for a few seconds for the synchronization to be completed. Navigate to the Staff Info list and you will find that those 6 users in the Active Directory have been imported to the SharePoint list, and the thumbnail photos have been synced as following.