Mapping and populate the additional user profile properties in SharePoint Online from Active Directory

Question

I am looking if there is a non-programmatic way to auto populate mobile number property from Active Directory to SharePoint Online User Profile properties so it can be used in the contact list instead of manually entering and maintaining it separately.

We can see only few pre-defined fields that were getting populated. Please let me know if there is any powershell script or configurations at Active directory/SharePoint. We are using Directory Sync to Office 365 to allow the login via user principle name.

Answer 1

While this cannot be done "out of the box", it can be done programmatically via CSOM or Web Service (CSOM is preferred). Microsoft has released a few samples. The Core.UserProfilePropertyUpdater is an example using the userprofileservice.asmx Web Service in SPO.

The second option is the CSOM. While not a complete sample, the basic outline is there to create a console application on-prem to consume attributes from Active Directory and push them to SPO.

If you need additional help in working with Active Directory attributes, there are some great articles, and one I've personally used quite a bit is Howto: (Almost) Everything In Active Directory via C#.

In the hopefully near future, there will be a User Profile Batch Update API. Unlike the CSOM solution, this solution should allow you to use an App Principal (rather than a stored username/password of a Global or SharePoint Admin) as well as be more efficient to update User Profile properties.