Profile pictures not showing in user profiles after configuring Sharepoint for synch with Exchange

Question

I walked through the following steps to configure Sharepoint 2013 to get profile images from Exchange 2013. The procedure has completed without errors and all the required certificates are in place, but the pictures are not showing in user profiles. If I type in a browser, running in the server, the direct URL to an Exchange image (something like

https://my.email.dns/ews/Exchange.asmx/s/GetUserPhoto?email=test.sharepoint@test.com&size=HR648x648

), the image is correctly downloaded and displayed. By the way, I see that the image is 120x120 px, not sure if this is relevant...

The only hint I've got so far is the following couple of log lines, that show up in ULS every time I try to retrieve a profile image with a request to Sharepoint:

10/21/2015 15:21:15.86  w3wp.exe (0x0FAC)   0x2BD4  Web Content Management  Publishing  ai1oo   High    PhotosUrl or EcpPhotoUrl is null (from AutoDiscover) for Url - /User Photos/Immagini profilo/domain01_test_sharepoint_MThumb.jpg    c6cb399d-0c7c-f0c8-4a90-cef7fef94a5b
10/21/2015 15:21:15.86  w3wp.exe (0x0FAC)   0x2BD4  Web Content Management  Publishing  aji2f   Medium  ProcessPictureRequest: AutoDiscoverPhotoUrls returned the following: ExternalPhotosUrl = , ExternalEcpPhotoUrl = , UserMSOnline =   c6cb399d-0c7c-f0c8-4a90-cef7fef94a5b

Moreover, after the procedure, the users that have a valid high def picture in Exchange, show a profile with the following properties set:

• Picture Timestamp = [some number similar to 63581034212]
• Picture Exchange Sync State = 0

[EDIT: could it depend on the fact that those users accessed their "MySite"?]

My task is made more difficult by the fact that I have no access to the Exchange server.

I spent an entire day trying to solve this problem and now I am completely stuck.

Does it sound familiar to anybody? What else could I do to further troubleshoot the problem?

I suppose that there is a time when a request originates from Sharepoint that is directed to Exchange and asks for the image URL or the image stream itself. Is that right? When does it happen and what does the request look like?

Answer 1

Try updating your profile photo store by running the following PowerShell command (replace http://mysite with your mysite site collection):

Update-SPProfilePhotoStore –CreateThumbnailsForImportedPhotos 1 –MySiteHostLocation http://mysite

StackExchange

Technet

Answer 2

In my own environment I found it was caused by not having the external URL defined for the Web Services virtual directory in Exchange.

Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Server yourexchangeserver | Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -ExternalUrl https://server.yourdomain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx

I modified the script from here under item 1 to test the results coming back from Exchange using the same API that SharePoint is calling.